When I was young I fancied becoming a doctor. The allure of medicine, of diagnosing diseases, of understanding the complexity of the human body – it all seemed endlessly fascinating. It offered a universe of ideas and challenges you could lose yourself in that could help person after person through challenges with illness and health. And then, in the midst of that momentum, when I was 14, in my little southwestern Ohio town, I went to a so-called star party.

Someone had set up a Criterion Dynascope 6-inch reflector, one of those telescopes with a long white tube and with the eyepiece fixed high at the upper end, and I peered in to take my first telescopic look at Saturn. That moment changed my life. Seeing the radiant light from Saturn’s bright orange globe, encircled by golden orange rings, incised by a black gap, made me gasp. The pinpoint of a little saturnian moon hovered nearby. Everything just stopped. I was transfixed by the vision of another world – live, in real time – right before my eyes.