That was a question that only a handful of professional astronomers cared about, but amateur observers, like the ones whose drawings were printed in the magazine, seemed to be on the case. He was subscribing to Sky & Telescope magazine and following the continuing debate over whether the canals on Mars really existed. By the time he went to see Invaders from Mars and War of the Worlds as a teenager in 1953, he was building his first telescope, a three-inch refractor with lenses from Edmund Scientific and a body made from a stovepipe his dad got for him. Looking at his résumé you’d never know about his other life, the one dominated by a lifelong obsession with Mars. He spent a few years in the navy, went to medical school, and ended up living in Florida with his wife, Maureen, and their children, working as an anesthesiologist in a Miami hospital. ON PAPER, Don Parker’s life story is pretty ordinary: Born in 1939, he grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Chicago. In his memory here’s an excerpt from Chaikin’s book, A Passion for Mars.ĭon Parker with his 16-inch telescope, which he used to take thousands of superb images of the planets. Standing under the moon and Mars we bonded, and soon we were making plans for me to come down to his place for the closest approach.”ĭon passed away on February 22, 2015. I certainly had never imagined that he would turn out to be as much fun as he was, with a warped, wickedly bawdy sense of humor. I’d seen Don’s work for decades in Sky & Telescope magazine, but until the occultation we’d never met. “I first met Don, a retired anesthesiologist from Coral Gables, Florida, several weeks earlier when I journeyed with my telescope to Florida to photograph the Moon passing in front of Mars, an event called an occultation. Author Andrew Chaikin asked Universe Today to tell the story of how he was fortunate enough to enjoy the event with Don Parker, a “superb planetary photographer and wonderful guy,” Chaikin wrote. Editor’s note: On AugMars was closer to Earth than at any time in human history.
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