First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe
by Richard Preston
Review by Sean Doorly

My freshman year of college I signed up for Astronomy 101 with Professor Hardorp. I was so excited about the class -- finally a chance to learn about the planets, stars, and black holes I had read about as a kid.

Two of my friends also shared a passion for the stars and signed up with me. A few weeks into the class I regretted ever taking it. The teacher made such a fascinating subject so BORING. We called him the walking-talking sleeping pill. To make sure we didn't miss any notes we would take turns sleeping while one person would take class notes. There was a slight problem with the master plan. None of us could read our notes once we got back to our dorms. The culprit... sleep notes. This is where you try to write and sleep at the same time. Final result: unreadable notes.

What does this have to do with "First Light?" Everything.

With "First Light," Richard Preston has given me back the stars, but with a twist. In telling the story of the people who study these wonders, Preston puts a human face on these scientists. They have marriages, divorces, eat Oreo cookies and watch wrestling. They are also very passionate about their work. They work 14-hour shifts in the dark and freezing cold for little money or, as in Carolyn Shoemaker's case, no money. But in 1994, Carolyn Shoemaker was one of the scientists who discovered the comets that slammed into Jupiter.

The action of the book centers around the Hale Telescope and the people who created it and work on it. "It is a huge telescope, the heaviest working telescope on earth. Seven stories tall... glides so easily on Flying Horse telescope oil that you can move it by hand. The Hale's mirror took fourteen years to cast and polish."

Preston begins and ends the book with Juan Carrasco, the senior night assistant at Palomar Observatory, "himself no astronomer, because nobody in their right mind would let an astronomer touch the controls of one of the most powerful telescopes on earth." We follow Juan in the first chapter as he introduces the rest of the cast: James Gunn, Don Schneider and Maarten Schmidt. I particularly liked Jim Gunn, a gadgeteer-astronomer who would ferret through dumpsters for parts. Many of the devices he created using these junk parts are still used on the Hale telescope today.

I finished this book yesterday sitting in my living room while not watching the Super Bowl. (Sorry, I'm just not a football fan. Who won anyway?) When I finished, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed a book about a telescope.

Preston serves up wonderful tidbits of information:

· Telescopes are our first time machines. When a telescope takes a photograph of the sky, it is making an image of the past. Astronomers call this lookback time.

· The universe is between 10-20 billion years old and is continually expanding.

· Dark Matter makes up to 99% of the universe and we have no idea what it is.

I chuckled at some of the names of asteroids: Lucifer, Tolkien, Chaucer, Dali, Mr. Spock and three named for Eva Peron. (And this was before Madonna's movie.)

This is only a sample of the scientific trivia that jumped out at me. Mr. Preston devotes much of the book to the personal lives of these scientists. After reading "First Light" I agree with him when he says, "I was surprised to see how chaotic, amusing, and passionate science is. Scientific facts are often described in textbooks as if they just sort of exist."

Mr. Preston is a non-fiction Michael Crichton. You might remember Preston as the author of the "The Hot Zone." I read that book in one sweat-inducing weekend. And for months every time I would get a cold or the sniffles, I knew it must be Ebola. First Light didn't have the same "sweat effect" but it is still thoroughly readable. Preston has quite a knack, like Crichton, to make science understandable to mere mortals.

Finally, Mr. Preston, did you ever think of teaching?

If so, I know of one student who would sign up again and not fall asleep.