HUMBOLDT ? Mike Myer is a time-traveler.
Unlike the intrepid crew of the starship Enterprise, Mike seldom journeys far from his Humboldt home to pierce interstellar space and view objects as amazing as double stars, star-birthing nebulae or vast clouds of colorful dust suspended in the cosmic vacuum.
What he sees isn?t in real time. Even viewing craters on the Earth?s nearby moon is a little less than a light second away. The moon stands off 240,000 miles; light travels at 186,282 miles a second.
The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years removed.
Thus, when Mike trains his 20-inch refractor telescope on the heavens, he is seeing what happened in the past. Many galaxies and stars are so far away that what can be seen from Earth today may not exist.
Mike?s fascination with astronomy began at age 9 when U.S. astronauts were venturing to the moon in Apollo spacecraft.
He ordered a small refractor telescope through Iola?s Penney?s store. (Mike lived in Iola through eighth grade, before moving to Humboldt.)
That telescope, a toy in every measure compared to the instruments he uses today, was a constant companion night after night.
It opened a new world. Mike read everything he could find on astronomy. He never tired of learning about space, though there came a time when daughter Miranda?s interest in learning to fly intervened.
?It cost $6,500 for lessons,? he said of her endeavor.
Another hobby, photography, came to the rescue as a second job. He has worked at Monarch Cement going on 28 years.
?I had been taking photos of Humboldt ball games (he?s a 1977 HHS grad) and people started asking me to take some for them,? Mike said. He obliged, mostly as a way to help pay for Miranda?s flying lessons.
She soloed on her 16th birthday and received her private pilot?s license on her 17th birthday. Today she works in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
MIKE HAS directed his interest in photography to taking photos of celestial bodies.
His accomplishments are many.
As a member of the Kansas City Astronomical Society, he travels to Louisburg to share his computerized viewing platforms on Saturday nights April through October. Also accessible is the society?s 30-inch refractor scope.
He joined the 400-member club in 1988.
A quick lesson: A refractor telescope has a concave mirror at its base to collect light from images and concentrate and return it to a flat mirror at the top. From there it is directed through a magnifying eyepiece.
An aside: Being associated with the Kansas City club gives Mike opportunities to participate in competitive programs in the worldwide league of amateur astronomers. His most recent accomplishment was to identify 100 double-stars, including describing and drawing their likenesses.
