Skip to main content

Adventures chasing the stars

caption: The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers, by Emily Levesque.
Enlarge Icon
The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers, by Emily Levesque.
Courtesy of the author.

A University of Washington astronomer offers a window into a life spent seeking to understand the cosmos.

When Emily Levesque was a little girl, she would lie in her backyard looking up at the stars.

She grew up to be an astronomy rockstar, and her new book tells some of the most adventurous, notorious stories in her field. It's called The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers.

She spoke with KUOW’s Jeannie Yandel about the observatory in the path of Mt St Helens’ eruption, the animal kingdom enemy #1 of astronomers, and answered a question from an astute young astrophysicist in training.

Why you can trust KUOW