Part 8. The road and Hollywood, 1991 to 2014: the touring years and the return to a monastery

Since 1991 he and a fellow astronomer, Barry Hirrell, had been putting on sky shows in downtown Noe Valley, in San Francisco. In April 1997, with Comet Hale-Bopp in the sky, the neighborhood lined up at the Sidewalk Astronomers’ telescopes on 24th Street. “We have hundreds of people stop every time we come out,” Dobson said. One night at full Moon they had 4 telescopes in front of the Starbucks at 24th and Noe, and “they were lined up six or seven deep.” For 2 months each fall he taught telescope making and cosmology at the Randall Museum and the Academy of Sciences.66.Noe Valley Voice, May 1997.record from the timeNoe Valley Voice, May 1997: Mazook, “Watch the Skies”, Noe Valley Voice, May 1997.

Morris Jones watched him on a San Francisco street corner a couple of years later. The telescope was a small red tube that could have passed for a mortar, aimed at the Moon, and the man beside it, who looked frail to Jones, wore his white hair in a ponytail. “That’s how the moon would look an hour before you land on it,” Dobson told whoever was at the eyepiece. When somebody said it was cool, he said, “Oh no, that’s not cool at all,” because the lit side was hotter than boiling water and the dark side was frigid. Every viewer went away with a folded one-page flier about the universe.77.Jones, club page.someone who was thereJones, club page: Morris Jones, “On The Sidewalk With John”, about 1999-2000 (posted 2004), sidewalkastronomers.us.

He liked to be challenged, Jones wrote, and one night at 24th and Noe, with Jupiter in a 6-inch telescope, he was telling everybody who looked, “It’s not a planet, it’s a star.” A man who went on from his eyepiece to Jones’s, and was told there that Jupiter was a planet, reported what the fellow at the other telescope had said. On one of those evenings 2 police officers pulled up and got out for a look, and so did the driver of a Muni bus, whose passengers waited in it across the street.88.Jones, club page.someone who was thereJones, club page: Morris Jones, “On The Sidewalk With John”, about 1999-2000 (posted 2004), sidewalkastronomers.us.

He had a case for it, and a few years earlier he had put it to a cosmology class. Jupiter and Saturn have the Sun’s own makeup, he said, and nearly all of the solar system’s angular momentum between them, so they must have formed along with the Sun, as its companions. “They’re stars and they’re not planets at all,” he told the class, and “Jupiter shines more than twice as much energy as it gets from the Sun”, though not as light that anyone can see.99.Cosmology class 3, at 00:08:45, 00:09:39, 00:09:16, 00:09:49. Recorded: “They’re stars and they’re not planets…” (Cosmology class 3, 00:09:16). Recorded: “Jupiter shines more than twice as…” (Cosmology class 3, 00:09:49).his own accountCosmology class 3: John Dobson, cosmology class 3, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).

Cosmology was what he would rather have talked about on the corner anyway. He held out for a steady-state universe against the Big Bang and called that an unpopular view himself. The button on his jacket read “Nothing doesn’t exist.”1010.Jones, club page; Perlman 2000.someone who was thereJones, club page: Morris Jones, “On The Sidewalk With John”, about 1999-2000 (posted 2004), sidewalkastronomers.us.record from the timePerlman 2000: David Perlman, “A Star Among Astronomers”, San Francisco Chronicle, about December 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).

When he was 85 the pupils of Alvarado Elementary School had him for 6 hours one day, for slides and their questions. One of them asked for his favorite planet, and he named Saturn, “because its rings are so lovely”. The same evening found him at the Josephine Randall Museum, where a dozen builders in an 8-week telescope class had come to their last session. His instructions were brusque. “John’s a perfectionist most of the time,” one of them said, and what he wanted he insisted on. They were finishing mounts of scrap lumber that swung 6-foot cardboard tubes around on old phonograph records.1111.Perlman 2000.record from the timePerlman 2000: David Perlman, “A Star Among Astronomers”, San Francisco Chronicle, about December 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).

He was away from San Francisco for most of the year by then, and the evenings on the corners, Jones noted, did not come as often as they had.1212.Jones, club page.someone who was thereJones, club page: Morris Jones, “On The Sidewalk With John”, about 1999-2000 (posted 2004), sidewalkastronomers.us.

The other place he came back to every year was Hollywood. Gopal Stavig, a historian of Vedanta in Southern California, wrote that from 1992 to 2004 he stayed at the Vedanta Society there for several months at a stretch, and that while he was in residence he gave series of cosmology classes that ran for more than a month. He taught telescope making there as well.1313.Stavig 2019, p. 7; Club biography.a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).a later writerClub biography: “John Dobson: A Brief Biography”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

In 2000 he was on the lawn of the Vedanta monastery, gray ponytail wagging, in ratty clothes, running a mirror-grinding class of 20 or so. A young boy who was doing it wrong got barked at: longer strokes, longer strokes. Dobson was 84 and had been teaching people to grind glass for 30-odd years, and his patience, he admitted, was not what it had been. One of the students, a retired real-estate saleswoman, said he was her guru.1414.Space.com 2000.record from the timeSpace.com 2000: Space.com profile of John Dobson, May 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).

That September the Sidewalk Astronomers gave him his 85th birthday party on the front lawn of the Griffith Observatory and threw it open to everyone. He had spent the evening before outside the Burbank Mall with his friends, showing the Moon until 10. At the party he stood shirtless at a sun telescope, calling “Come and see the sun,” to anyone within earshot, and told the ones who came that the dark spot they were looking at was a sunspot, or as he called it, a magnetohydrodynamic zit. “I’m too old to retire,” he said.1515.Sullivant 2001, p. 68, p. 71, p. 70.someone who was thereSullivant 2001: Rosemary Sullivant, “On the Road with John Dobson”, Astronomy, September 2001.

Jeff Newsome, who took his mirror class at the Vedanta Center early in 2004, described a day of it. Dobson lectured on cosmology after the morning services, and many of the people who had come for the services stayed to listen. Lunch was at a Denny’s, where there was a wait for a table, and Dobson spent it at the flower beds out front, helping himself to the marigolds. In the afternoon he went over the basics of a telescope for the beginners, and then Bill Scott and Bob Alborzian started the students grinding. On another morning, at Scott’s place, he poured Newsome’s first pitch lap, handed it over and said, “take it home, now comes the hard part.”1616.Sidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004, p. 8; Newsome 2004; Sidewalk Astronomer, Winter/Spring 2005, p. 16, p. 21.record from the timeSidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004: The Sidewalk Astronomer (newsletter of the Sidewalk Astronomers), Summer 2004.someone who was thereNewsome 2004: Jeff Newsome, “Making a Mirror”, sidewalkastronomers.us, 2004.someone who was thereSidewalk Astronomer, Winter/Spring 2005: The Sidewalk Astronomer (newsletter of the Sidewalk Astronomers), Winter/Spring 2005.

Most of the year he was somewhere else, and other people got him there. Jane Houston Jones had come to him in 1988 as a student in his telescope class, and a dozen years later she was his principal driver and organizer. By 2004 the person to ask was Donna Smith of the Sidewalk Astronomers, his “agent” and “organizer” in one student’s words. “Call Donna and ask her,” Dobson would say. “I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow!” Smith said the next year that being on the road with him was “like traveling with a movie star”. Pascale Demy, who met him in Germany in 2006, reported his own name for himself: the package.1717.Sidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004, p. 11, p. 5; Perlman 2000; Newsome 2004; Moser 2005; Astronomie Heute 2007, p. 69.record from the timeSidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004: The Sidewalk Astronomer (newsletter of the Sidewalk Astronomers), Summer 2004.record from the timePerlman 2000: David Perlman, “A Star Among Astronomers”, San Francisco Chronicle, about December 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).someone who was thereNewsome 2004: Jeff Newsome, “Making a Mirror”, sidewalkastronomers.us, 2004.record from the timeMoser 2005: Don Moser, “35 Who Made a Difference: John Dobson”, Smithsonian, November 2005.someone who was thereAstronomie Heute 2007: Pascale Demy, “John Dobson kam nach Süddeutschland”, Astronomie Heute, January/February 2007 (in German).

He lived in other people’s houses, the homes of amateur astronomers, friends and friends of friends. Of his hosts, abroad and at home, he wrote in 2002 that “they take such good care of you that it brings you to tears.” The next year he put the number of people he met at about 100,000 a year. He met them in the dark, he said, so he could not tell you what any of them looked like. He kept a basement apartment in San Francisco and was seldom in it. By 2004 the club’s newsletter was asking people not to write to him there: he was gone, it said, 10 months of the year, nobody picked up the phone messages, and letters sat for months before they were opened. “Nowadays I live all over the place,” he said that summer.1818.Club biography; Eugene Weekly 2004; England And Ireland 2002; Oregonian 2003; Campbell 2004; Sidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004, p. 14; Crater Lake interview, edited.a later writerClub biography: “John Dobson: A Brief Biography”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).record from the timeEugene Weekly 2004: “Seeing Stars”, Eugene Weekly, 15 July 2004.his own accountEngland And Ireland 2002: John Dobson, “England And Ireland”, trip report, 2002, sidewalkastronomers.us.a later writerOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.record from the timeCampbell 2004: Brett Campbell, “The Father of Street-Corner Stargazing”, Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2004, p. D10.record from the timeSidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004: The Sidewalk Astronomer (newsletter of the Sidewalk Astronomers), Summer 2004.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).

In June 1996 he was at the Grand Canyon again, for the 6th of the annual star parties there, with the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers on the South Rim. By his own account he had stayed away for 14 years and did not go back on his own. Dean Ketelsen, of Tucson, who organized the annual party, recognized him as the founder of star parties at the canyon, he said, and invited him back, several times in the end; he was there as late as 2001. He was 80 that June. For 2 of the days he was down on the trails below the rim, telling the hikers he met what was going on at the top. The Grand Canyon School got a telescope out of the week, built on the spot with Dobson in charge, and he figured a mirror up there single-handed.1919.Kurtz 1996, p. 17, p. 18; Crater Lake interview, transcript; Crater Lake interview, edited.someone who was thereKurtz 1996: Patti A. Kurtz, “Observing at the Edge”, Astronomy, October 1996, pp. 17-20.his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).

In December 1998 he and Jane Houston Jones went to Hawaii’s Big Island for a project called Telescopes for Kids: 50 children were to make their own mirrors and mounts. By her account about 40 children ground glass on the first Sunday, and the wood and the tubes had still to be found. The promised plywood had fallen through, the nearest Sonotube was a single length in Hilo, 80 miles away, and the visitors went through dumpsters for lumber. The next Sunday the children came by the carload, and Dobson poured pitch onto each 6-inch tool and pressed the mirror’s curve into it. Most of them took their mirrors home to go on polishing. A few were done when the two visitors flew home, and the plan was for the rest to be finished in small groups and for all of them to be coated in the Keck telescope’s aluminizing chamber, up on Mauna Kea.2020.Houston Jones 1998, part 1; Houston Jones 1998, part 2; Houston Jones 1998, part 3.someone who was thereHouston Jones 1998, part 1: Jane Houston Jones, “Hawaii with John Dobson 1998”, part 1, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).someone who was thereHouston Jones 1998, part 2: Jane Houston Jones, “Hawaii with John Dobson 1998”, part 2, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).someone who was thereHouston Jones 1998, part 3: Jane Houston Jones, “Hawaii with John Dobson 1998”, part 3, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

In 2002, at 86, he made what he called his first trip to Europe. By his own account he and Donna Smith went to Russia, Siberia and Ukraine late that August, with no telescopes and none of the language, and he doubted that the two of them had done much for the people there, though he hoped something had reached the young people in the science clubs of the Palace of the Pioneers. “And all I learned to say in Russian was thank you and juice,” he wrote. Smith went home, and he went on to England and Ireland, where the trouble was his old ears and the way the English spoke English. Treated a little like a foreigner, he had an answer ready: “We were Englishmen who told Parliament where to go.”2121.England And Ireland 2002.his own accountEngland And Ireland 2002: John Dobson, “England And Ireland”, trip report, 2002, sidewalkastronomers.us.

On Sunday, September 29, his English hosts brought him to the Orwell Park Observatory, near Ipswich, and Neil Morley wrote down what he saw. The observatory has 111 stairs. Dobson, who was 87 by then, counted them on his way up and was not troubled by any of them. Afterward, in the grounds, he asked whether a certain tree was a yew and whether it had berries, and before anyone had an answer he had gone round behind it to look. It had, and he was eating them, less the odd stone. They were sweet, he told Morley, and the flesh of the berry was the one part of a yew that was not poisonous. Morley tried one.2222.Orwell newsletter 2002.someone who was thereOrwell newsletter 2002: Neil Morley, on his visit to Orwell Park Observatory, 29 September 2002, Orwell Astronomical Society newsletter, November 2002.

At the end of July 2004 the Crater Lake Institute brought him to the lake to give him its annual award for excellence in public service. The Sidewalk Astronomers had taken their telescopes there for several summers and then, by his account, had given the place up, once they could no longer give their slide shows and the naturalist of the day did not come out to look. Now he had a room in the lodge and, for the first time at Crater Lake, no telescope. “I feel like a tourist,” he told Owen Hoffman, who interviewed him there. He closed the interview with a line of his own: “Crater Lake is to the Cascade Range what Saturn is to the Solar System.” The group had not given up Death Valley, he said that day: they still went almost every winter, in the week after Christmas.2323.Crater Lake interview, edited; Crater Lake interview, transcript; Anecdotes.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountAnecdotes: John Dobson, “Memories” (anecdotes), sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

A filmmaker, Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, got in touch with him in the spring of 2003 and followed him around the country, on and off, with a digital camera, until he had 45 hours of footage. The film cut from it, A Sidewalk Astronomer, runs 78 minutes. It was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2005 and released that July. It opens at 24th and Noe on a first-quarter evening, with Dobson calling people over to the Moon, and it has him at a sun telescope on Haight Street and again in Golden Gate Park, folding the group’s leaflets at his kitchen table, and singing a hymn at home, at the harmonium. It trails him to campuses, to star parties and to the telescope makers’ convention at Stellafane, in Vermont, where David Levy thanks him from the stage and sets him next to Newton.2424.Moynihan 2005; Scheib 2005; LA Times 2005; Film synopsis.record from the timeMoynihan 2005: Colin Moynihan, “Astronomer on Sidewalk Shares Passion for Galaxy”, New York Times, 7 August 2005.record from the timeScheib 2005: Ronnie Scheib, review of A Sidewalk Astronomer, Variety, April 2005 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).record from the timeLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.a later writerFilm synopsis: “A Sidewalk Astronomer: A Detailed Synopsis”, synopsis of the 2005 film, telescopepictures.com, about 2005.

At every stop, Variety’s reviewer noticed, he tells the same astrophysical jokes. A child once wanted to know, he says in the film, if he was a comedian or an astronomer, and he answered that the universe was the funny one and that he was not to blame for it. When somebody asks if the mount was what he had been after all along, he says that he was only trying to point a telescope above the horizon, and that it ought not to have been given his name. He was 89 when the film came out, and he told the New York Times that Jacobs had understood what he was filming.2525.Scheib 2005; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 01:10:54, 00:24:47; Moynihan 2005.record from the timeScheib 2005: Ronnie Scheib, review of A Sidewalk Astronomer, Variety, April 2005 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).record from the timeMoynihan 2005: Colin Moynihan, “Astronomer on Sidewalk Shares Passion for Galaxy”, New York Times, 7 August 2005.

Early in 2005 Stefan Seip, a German writer, watched him at a telescope shop in Tucson, where some of the customers went home to fetch their telescopes so that he could sign them. He signed for everyone, joking as he went that he ought to hire a man to do the signing, or get a stamp made. Then, taking a rest, he caught Seip watching and murmured, with a grin, that he was really too old to be earning his money this way. He was looking forward to that year’s Grand Canyon star party, and Seip asked which telescope he would take. Dobson said he could not carry much anymore. He had helpers who moved his 12-inch.2626.Astronomie Heute 2005, p. 53, p. 54, p. 55.record from the timeAstronomie Heute 2005: Astronomie Heute, October 2005: editorial, p. 3, and Stefan Seip, “Der Grandseigneur der Sterngucker”, pp. 52-55 (in German).

That summer he taught a 3-week telescope class in Monmouth, Oregon, in the heat, and by the end of it he was bellowing at his students. He turned 90 in September, and Smithsonian magazine put him on its list of 35 people who had made a difference. Don Moser’s article there opens with him on a city sidewalk beside a small sun telescope, waiting until some tourists come along and then calling “Come, come see the sun,” while he starts a lariat spinning and hops through the loop.2727.LA Times 2005; Moser 2005; Astronomie Heute 2005, p. 3.record from the timeLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.record from the timeMoser 2005: Don Moser, “35 Who Made a Difference: John Dobson”, Smithsonian, November 2005.record from the timeAstronomie Heute 2005: Astronomie Heute, October 2005: editorial, p. 3, and Stefan Seip, “Der Grandseigneur der Sterngucker”, pp. 52-55 (in German).

He made little money at any of it. The Los Angeles Times put the price of the Oregon class at $120 a student, plus about $350 for materials, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s obituary says that he “charged no fees” for teaching. The people who had him paid his fare, his keep and a small honorarium. Donna Smith, who managed his tours, knew what could happen to a check made out to him. “He’s ripped up checks before,” she said. “Or he just lost them.” He had not paid income tax, he told the Los Angeles Times, since 1944. That was the year he entered the monastery.2828.LA Times 2005; SF Chronicle obituary 2014; Moser 2005; Regas 2014; LA Times obituary 2014.record from the timeLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.record from the timeMoser 2005: Don Moser, “35 Who Made a Difference: John Dobson”, Smithsonian, November 2005.someone who was thereRegas 2014: Dean Regas, “The Astronomer Who Showed Us the Sky”, HuffPost, 2014 (from his 2005 interview).a later writerLA Times obituary 2014: Elaine Woo, obituary of John Dobson, Los Angeles Times, January 2014.

In September 2006, on a tour of 5 countries in 5 weeks, he went to Germany for the first time. He walked fast and took the stairs wherever there was a choice. At a telescope shop near Stuttgart one man wanted an old telescope mirror signed on its front. Dobson said no, kindly, and signed the back. On September 14, his 91st birthday, he lectured at a theater in Saarlouis, and when somebody asked about dark matter he said the stuff had been made up “to save the big bang theory”.2929.Astronomie Heute 2007, p. 68, p. 69, p. 70.someone who was thereAstronomie Heute 2007: Pascale Demy, “John Dobson kam nach Süddeutschland”, Astronomie Heute, January/February 2007 (in German).

In March 2008, when he was 92, he had a stroke. Until that year astronomy clubs all over the world had had him as their guest for most of every year. After it he could travel far less, and he never fully recovered.3030.Scott 2010; Club biography; SF Chronicle obituary 2014; LA Times obituary 2014.his own accountScott 2010: Phil Scott, “It’s All Sawdust and Mirrors”, Air & Space, 30 June 2010.a later writerClub biography: “John Dobson: A Brief Biography”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.a later writerLA Times obituary 2014: Elaine Woo, obituary of John Dobson, Los Angeles Times, January 2014.

He went to live at the Vedanta Society’s monastery in Hollywood, where for years he had been a guest for months at a stretch. It was not the monastery he had left. That one was in Sacramento, 41 years back, and by his own word he had been “asked to leave” it. In Hollywood, by his club’s account, he was “accepted into the community” without becoming a monk again. He still did a little sidewalk observing in those years and gave a talk now and then, to the Vedantists or to amateur astronomers, and the brothers and the members of the Society looked after him. Stavig wrote that he kept a regular habit of meditation and that his “zeal for life” impressed people.3131.Stavig 2019, p. 7; Sky at Night 2006; Club biography.a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).his own accountSky at Night 2006: Interview with John Dobson, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, December 2006.a later writerClub biography: “John Dobson: A Brief Biography”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

Six months after the stroke, on September 14, 2008, his 93rd birthday, he was on a stage at the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show. One of the organizers explained the delay to the hall: they kept settling on a seat for him, and he kept settling on another. He kept calling the people with questions up closer. “My ears are about 80 years too old,” he told one of them. Asked about his first telescope, he said, “My entire claim to fame rests on the fact that I did not do something.” He had never made a telescope follow the stars for photographs, and the mount that carried his name was no invention at all: “It’s an absence of an invention.” A questioner who had a telescope of his kind wanted to know what to look at next. “Get it out for the public,” Dobson said. “Let them see the moon.”3232.Scott 2010; PATS talk 2008, at 00:25:50, 00:06:57, 00:32:17, 00:15:11, 00:16:04, 00:35:57. Recorded: “My ears are about 80 years…” (PATS talk 2008, 00:32:17). Recorded: “My entire claim to fame rests…” (PATS talk 2008, 00:15:11). Recorded: “It’s an absence of an invention.” (PATS talk 2008, 00:16:04). Recorded: “Get it out for the public” (PATS talk 2008, 00:35:57). Recorded: “Let them see the moon.” (PATS talk 2008, 00:35:57).his own accountScott 2010: Phil Scott, “It’s All Sawdust and Mirrors”, Air & Space, 30 June 2010.his own accountPATS talk 2008: John Dobson, “Einstein’s Geometry”, talk at the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show, 14 September 2008 (recording).

Nothing had been arranged for his 94th birthday, in 2009, until the last minute, when the Sidewalk Astronomers phoned whoever lived near and made a small party of it. Friends he had not seen in a good while came, which pleased him. Donna Smith, Bill Scott and Bob Alborzian were among the Sidewalk Astronomers there, and several people from the Vedanta Society came too. The next February he was in San Francisco, 94 years old, talking to a group of sidewalk astronomers in front of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s offices.3333.Club news 2009; SF Chronicle obituary 2014.someone who was thereClub news 2009: “John’s 94th Birthday”, club news, sidewalkastronomers.us, 2009 (archived copy).a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.

Phil Scott, a magazine writer who was building a small telescope of the Dobson kind, left a message for him at the monastery, and when the telescope was finished Dobson phoned back. Scott asked what had become of his original telescope. “Somebody borrowed it and set it up for ten years,” Dobson said. “They took the mirror out and left it set up in the rain, and we lost the rest of it.” As for Scott’s telescope, it was only a little one, he said, and what Scott did with it was not very important. He should find the people who bring telescopes to star parties: “If you hob and nob with these people, you’ll eventually get to be a hobber and nobber yourself.” Scott’s article came out in June 2010.3434.Scott 2010.his own accountScott 2010: Phil Scott, “It’s All Sawdust and Mirrors”, Air & Space, 30 June 2010.

On August 4, 2012, the evening before the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, he was a special guest at a Planetary Society reception in Pasadena. Afterward the party moved outdoors, and he sat among the telescopes with a blanket around him against the chill. Mat Kaplan, who was recording for the Society’s radio program, asked how long it had been since the nights on the corner in San Francisco, which was his roundabout way, Kaplan said, of asking Dobson’s age. “I’m 96 years old now, and that was a long time ago,” Dobson said. His mount would last, he told Kaplan, because nobody was going to find a simpler way of pointing at the sky; he would have found it himself. And telescopes for everybody who was not an astronomer were a job, he said, that somebody had needed to do.3535.Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:08:25, 00:08:35, 00:19:24, 00:20:01, 00:20:15. Recorded: “I’m 96 years old now, and…” (Planetary Radio 2012, 00:19:24).his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).

On his last evening the swamis of the Hollywood monastery read the Bhagavad Gita to him. Mahesh Madhav wrote down what Swami Brahmavidyananda, who was there, told a gathering at the Hollywood center afterward. It was Tuesday, January 14, 2014, in a hospital in Burbank. The swamis read by turns, one chapter apiece, and they could see “a light in John’s eyes”; whenever one of them finished, Dobson gave him a thumbs-up. His breathing, heavy until then, had gone quiet when the reading began, and while he listened, the account says, he knew who was around him. Earlier that evening, when Swami Brahmavidyananda and another devotee sat with him alone, he had not seemed to the two of them to be aware of anything. It was late when the swamis left.3636.SRV Association 2014.a later writerSRV Association 2014: SRV Association, “In Memoriam: John Dobson”, srv.org, 2014.

He died the next morning, Wednesday, January 15, at about 11 by the same account, at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 98. Bob Alborzian, of the Burbank chapter of the Sidewalk Astronomers, gave the news to the Los Angeles Times. He had known Dobson since 1968, and remembered pressing him once to take out a patent on the design. The answer was no: “These are gifts to humanity.” The group’s own notice said he had died peacefully. He was survived by a son, Loren.3737.SRV Association 2014; LA Times obituary 2014; King 2014.a later writerSRV Association 2014: SRV Association, “In Memoriam: John Dobson”, srv.org, 2014.a later writerLA Times obituary 2014: Elaine Woo, obituary of John Dobson, Los Angeles Times, January 2014.record from the timeKing 2014: Bob King, “John Dobson, Inventor of the Popular Dobsonian Telescope, Dead at 98”, Universe Today, 16 January 2014.

The Sidewalk Astronomers asked for no donations toward a memorial or his last expenses. “What needed to be taken care of has been,” their notice said, and anyone who wanted to give something was asked to find a local astronomy club and help it instead. The notice said that the year’s International Sidewalk Astronomy Night, on March 8, would be dedicated to him. Andrew Fraknoi, chairman of Foothill College’s astronomy department, told the Chronicle that he had not agreed with everything Dobson taught, and called his teaching, his telescope and his love of sharing the sky “a wonderful gift”.3838.Byrd 2014; King 2014; SF Chronicle obituary 2014.record from the timeByrd 2014: Deborah Byrd, “R.I.P. John Dobson”, EarthSky, 16 January 2014.record from the timeKing 2014: Bob King, “John Dobson, Inventor of the Popular Dobsonian Telescope, Dead at 98”, Universe Today, 16 January 2014.a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.

On December 26, 2014, 11 months after he died, Donna Smith and 4 other Sidewalk Astronomers packed their telescopes in Burbank and drove to Death Valley, as the group had with him almost every winter, and set up again with the rangers at the Furnace Creek visitor center. Many of the visitors, one of the 5 wrote, had made the trip their “yearly pilgrimage” on his account, for the astronomy talk he used to give. By day the group stood sun telescopes at the doors of the visitor center. One of them was his, a design of his own, made so that nobody’s eye could come to harm at it. He used to say it was his only true Dobsonian.3939.Walker 2014; Crater Lake interview, transcript; AP, 24 Feb 1980; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:03:28.someone who was thereWalker 2014: Peggy Walker, “Sidewalk Astronomers in Death Valley 2014”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.record from the timeAP, 24 Feb 1980: Associated Press, “In Quest Of The Heavens”, Santa Cruz Sentinel, 24 February 1980, p. 79 (California Digital Newspaper Collection).a later writerThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).

1. The filming for The Astronomers. His anecdote dates the station’s call to about 1991, but the series was on the air by April 15, 1991, so the July at Crater Lake was an earlier one. He remembered that night’s shoot as a failure and Ghirardelli Square as the part that was used. The series has him at Crater Lake by day and at a night star party in a national park, by his own words on camera; the narration does not come back to him for 21 minutes, and then to say that his stay at Crater Lake is over. We have a transcript and not the picture, so we cannot say where that night was filmed. The boy’s line is as the Oakland Tribune printed it.4040.Anecdotes; Oakland Tribune, 15 Apr 1991; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:04:10, 00:06:06, 00:07:59, 00:08:10, 00:29:50.his own accountAnecdotes: John Dobson, “Memories” (anecdotes), sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).record from the timeOakland Tribune, 15 Apr 1991: “Starry-eyed show”, television column on the premiere of The Astronomers, Oakland Tribune, 15 April 1991, p. 23 (California Digital Newspaper Collection).a later writerThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).

2. The Tonight Show. The Oregonian, Stavig, Wikipedia and the website that carries his essays say he was on twice, the San Francisco Chronicle’s obituary once, and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times give no number. His own story is of one night. Television listings name him for June 5, 1991, and in repeats of two other 1991 shows the next spring, but a listing is a schedule, and we have not seen the broadcasts.4141.Oregonian 2003; Stavig 2019, p. 7; Wikipedia; quanta-gaia.org, About John Dobson; SF Chronicle obituary 2014; Campbell 2004; NYT obituary 2014; The Equations of Maya 1993; Listings, p. 22, p. 209, p. 61.a later writerOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).a later writerWikipedia: “John Dobson (amateur astronomer)”, Wikipedia (revision of 2026).a later writerquanta-gaia.org, About John Dobson: “About John Dobson”, home page of the Dobson pages kept by MagicPubs, quanta-gaia.org, undated (1995 to 2005).a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.record from the timeCampbell 2004: Brett Campbell, “The Father of Street-Corner Stargazing”, Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2004, p. D10.a later writerNYT obituary 2014: Douglas Martin, obituary of John Dobson, New York Times News Service, January 2014.his own accountThe Equations of Maya 1993: John Dobson, “The Equations of Maya”, written for the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions (printed in Cosmic Beginnings & Human Ends, Open Court, 1995), quanta-gaia.org.record from the timeListings: Class, event and broadcast listings in California newspapers, 1968 to 2001 (California Digital Newspaper Collection).

3. Home and money. His time at home in San Francisco is a few weeks a year in the Wall Street Journal (2004) and 2 months in the club biography and Wikipedia. The newsletter’s 10 months away is a round figure: its own schedule keeps him in San Francisco for most of 3 months. The Chronicle’s obituary (no steady income, no fees) and the London Times (a steady income from teaching) cannot both be right. The printed prices, a museum’s $27 in 1992 and the Oregon class’s $120, are what students paid; no source we have says where a fee went.4242.Campbell 2004; Club biography; Wikipedia; Sidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004, p. 14, p. 3; SF Chronicle obituary 2014; Times obituary 2014; SF Recreation and Park 1992, p. 3; LA Times 2005.record from the timeCampbell 2004: Brett Campbell, “The Father of Street-Corner Stargazing”, Wall Street Journal, 1 September 2004, p. D10.a later writerClub biography: “John Dobson: A Brief Biography”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerWikipedia: “John Dobson (amateur astronomer)”, Wikipedia (revision of 2026).record from the timeSidewalk Astronomer, Summer 2004: The Sidewalk Astronomer (newsletter of the Sidewalk Astronomers), Summer 2004.a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.a later writerTimes obituary 2014: Obituary of John Dobson, The Times (London), 28 January 2014.record from the timeSF Recreation and Park 1992: San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, “What’s doing in the parks?”, press releases, 1992.record from the timeLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.

4. The Grand Canyon and Crater Lake. That the group was asked in 1981 not to return is his account, in the 2004 interview, and the only one we have; an earlier part tells it. The edited text of the interview says he never went back on his own and that others took him; the interviewer’s transcript says he stayed away 14 years and was last there in 2001. The earliest dated return we have is June 1996. Both texts spell the organizer’s name Kettleson; Astronomy’s report of the 1996 party has Ketelsen, which the chapter follows. The interview gives the year the group gave up Crater Lake more than one way, and his anecdote gives the reason without a year, so the chapter gives none.4343.Crater Lake interview, transcript; Crater Lake interview, edited; Kurtz 1996, p. 17; Anecdotes.his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).someone who was thereKurtz 1996: Patti A. Kurtz, “Observing at the Edge”, Astronomy, October 1996, pp. 17-20.his own accountAnecdotes: John Dobson, “Memories” (anecdotes), sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

5. The 2002 tour. His own trip report starts the journey in Russia late in August. Neil Morley wrote that the tour had begun in late September at Irkutsk and would end a week later in Ireland.4444.England And Ireland 2002; Orwell newsletter 2002.his own accountEngland And Ireland 2002: John Dobson, “England And Ireland”, trip report, 2002, sidewalkastronomers.us.someone who was thereOrwell newsletter 2002: Neil Morley, on his visit to Orwell Park Observatory, 29 September 2002, Orwell Astronomical Society newsletter, November 2002.

6. Hawaii. The account is one visitor’s; we have none from the island’s side, and we have found nothing on how many of the children’s telescopes were finished.4545.Houston Jones 1998, part 2; Houston Jones 1998, part 3.someone who was thereHouston Jones 1998, part 2: Jane Houston Jones, “Hawaii with John Dobson 1998”, part 2, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).someone who was thereHouston Jones 1998, part 3: Jane Houston Jones, “Hawaii with John Dobson 1998”, part 3, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

7. The stroke, the monastery and the last day. Only Air & Space (2010) dates the stroke, to March 2008; the club biography speaks of health issues that spring, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers of a stroke he never fully recovered from, and the Los Angeles Times of poor health since. For his years at the monastery we have little: the club biography’s paragraph, two sentences of Stavig’s and the sightings the chapter gives. Readers who knew him in those years can write to the corrections page. The hospital evening is Mahesh Madhav’s retelling, on the SRV Association’s memorial page, of what Swami Brahmavidyananda said: our only account of that evening, and the only source with an hour for the death. The Los Angeles Times names the hospital and the son.4646.Scott 2010; Club biography; SF Chronicle obituary 2014; LA Times obituary 2014; Stavig 2019, p. 7; SRV Association 2014.his own accountScott 2010: Phil Scott, “It’s All Sawdust and Mirrors”, Air & Space, 30 June 2010.a later writerClub biography: “John Dobson: A Brief Biography”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerSF Chronicle obituary 2014: David Perlman, obituary of John Dobson, San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate), January 2014.a later writerLA Times obituary 2014: Elaine Woo, obituary of John Dobson, Los Angeles Times, January 2014.a later writerStavig 2019: Gopal Stavig, “Ramakrishna-Vedanta in Southern California”, part VIII, “John Dobson” (2019).a later writerSRV Association 2014: SRV Association, “In Memoriam: John Dobson”, srv.org, 2014.

8. Recordings, the film and dates. For the recordings (the PBS series, the telescope-building film, two classes of 1994 or 1995, the 2008 talk, the 2012 interview) one rule holds: his recorded words are quoted only where several independent speech-recognition systems (different engines, run separately) heard the same words; where they did not agree, he is paraphrased and the note gives the time in the recording. His case for Jupiter is from one of the classes; Jones does not give it. We have not seen A Sidewalk Astronomer: what it shows is from the film’s own synopsis, a review and two newspapers, and what he says in it is paraphrased from the published transcript, never quoted. At the 2008 talk a speaker says the day is Dobson’s birthday; the year rests on the recording’s file name, his age on a joke about it. Jones’s evenings carry no date; he gives Dobson’s age as 84, so about 1999 or 2000. English words quoted from the German articles are printed in English there.4747.The Astronomers 1991, at 00:04:10; Telescope Building film, at 00:23:28; Cosmology class 8, at 00:47:18; Cosmology class 3, at 00:09:16; PATS talk 2008, at 00:15:11, 00:06:57, 00:25:50; Planetary Radio 2012, at 00:19:24; Jones, club page; Film synopsis; Scheib 2005; Moynihan 2005; LA Times 2005; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 01:10:54; Astronomie Heute 2007, p. 70; Astronomie Heute 2005, p. 54.a later writerThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).his own accountTelescope Building film: Telescope Building with John Dobson, instructional film, about 1992 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 8: John Dobson, cosmology class 8, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 3: John Dobson, cosmology class 3, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountPATS talk 2008: John Dobson, “Einstein’s Geometry”, talk at the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show, 14 September 2008 (recording).his own accountPlanetary Radio 2012: Planetary Radio, Mat Kaplan, “A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson”, recorded 4 August 2012, broadcast 10 September 2012 (recording).someone who was thereJones, club page: Morris Jones, “On The Sidewalk With John”, about 1999-2000 (posted 2004), sidewalkastronomers.us.a later writerFilm synopsis: “A Sidewalk Astronomer: A Detailed Synopsis”, synopsis of the 2005 film, telescopepictures.com, about 2005.record from the timeScheib 2005: Ronnie Scheib, review of A Sidewalk Astronomer, Variety, April 2005 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).record from the timeMoynihan 2005: Colin Moynihan, “Astronomer on Sidewalk Shares Passion for Galaxy”, New York Times, 7 August 2005.record from the timeLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).someone who was thereAstronomie Heute 2007: Pascale Demy, “John Dobson kam nach Süddeutschland”, Astronomie Heute, January/February 2007 (in German).record from the timeAstronomie Heute 2005: Astronomie Heute, October 2005: editorial, p. 3, and Stefan Seip, “Der Grandseigneur der Sterngucker”, pp. 52-55 (in German).