Antony Hewish Quotes

In the field of astronomy in the mid-'60s, quasars were very sexy objects - gigantic, star-like masses about which little was known. I was a graduate research student at Cambridge working towards my Ph.D. and chose quasars as the subject for my thesis. Part of my project involved surveying the sky for them using a radio telescope.

The one way to discover about aliens is to tune your radio telescope and listen to the signals.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

My dad's a physicist and had a key to the St Andrew's observatory, and we used to pop down to see Halley's Comet and Saturn and meteor showers.

As I was leaving graduate school in 1974, I was recruited to join a fledgling SETI project at the Hat Creek Observatory in California, mainly because I knew how to program an ancient PDP8/S computer that had been donated to the project.

But when researchers at Bell Labs discovered that static tends to come from particular places in the sky, the whole field of radio astronomy opened up.

'Animal Kingdom' is a significant comet, and it's cast a tail. It's very hard to see anything post that happening without that.

Everybody thought I was a bit of an eccentric for wanting to be out there looking at the stars, but I still do.

The objects that are of moderate energy, like our sun or most of the stars that we see in the night sky with the naked eye, are objects in which relatively moderate energy processes are taking place.

Every star, whether it's Harrison Ford or Robert De Niro, is remembered by one film. Persis is a star in the sky - how can a star be forgotten when all you have to do is look up and see her?

But my most favourite pursuit, after my daily exertions at the Foundry, was Astronomy. There were frequently clear nights when the glorious objects in the Heavens were seen in most attractive beauty and brilliancy.

We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.

I am just learning to notice the different colors of the stars, and already begin to have a new enjoyment.

Until very recently, the heavenly bodies have been investigated only with reference to their position and their laws of motion, and a quarter of a century ago astronomy was little more than celestial topography.

Of all things visible, the highest is the heaven of the fixed stars.

I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter.

I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven years ago when I first did this kind of work.

In 1959 the University recognized our work by appointing me to a new Chair of Radio Astronomy.

I was, I remember, I still remember when the first time I pointed the telescope at the sky and I saw Saturn with the rings. It was a beautiful image.

Radio astronomy reflects our fascination with how audio can be used to understand information or ideas. Just as scientists visualize data through charts and pictures, we can use 'data sonification' to translate radio signals into sound that help us better understand some of our most enigmatic planetary systems.

Bits and pieces flung into the universe, sticking in the sky like cotton balls on a jet black velcro surface.

Classifying the stars has helped materially in all studies of the structure of the universe.

I am an astronomer, and my job is to look to the heavens to better understand the universe and our place in it.

The study of celestial phenomena at radio wavelengths, radio astronomy came into being after the accidental discovery of cosmic radiation by radio engineer Karl Jansky in 1933.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.