Paul D. Maley’s Home Page                              

Paul developed Ring of Fire Expeditions (ROFE) to serve as a public outreach by the NASA Johnson Space Center Astronomical Society. Through this, valuable international cooperation has been achieved in the planning and execution of many challenging expeditions, including 40 ROFE expeditions since 1970 to view a total or annular eclipse of the sun.

On a trip to Antarctica, Paul planted the Texas flag laying ‘claim’ to that portion of Antarctica for the state of Texas. Since the Palmer Peninsula has been claimed by Argentina, Britain and Chile and none of these claims carries any legitimate legal weight, this claim should be equally valid.

He has conducted many international astronomical outreach efforts in an effort to export interest in occultations of stars by asteroids.

 

As an amateur astronomer Paul D. Maley’s most significant accomplishments include:

- Successfully observed / videorecorded more than 130 eclipses of stars by minor planets

-Created an initiative adopted by the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to promote observation of the Space Shuttle and Mir station by planetariums around the world during the 1992 International Space Year. Paul computed visibility predictions of these bright space objects which were faxed by the UN to planetaria in 34 countries.

-Discovered that inactive earth satellites (space debris) could have an impact on professional astronomical discoveries. Paul determined that the cause of the infamous Aries (Perseus) flasher, an object that caused a stir in the astronomical world in 1985 was caused by sunlight glinting off a piece of Russian space debris (see Astrophysical Journal, vol. 317, 1987, L39-44). Sometime later, Greek astronomers published a paper and photograph proporting to show a bright meteor impact on the dark side of the moon. Paul clearly determined that this event was caused by an inactive American satellite passing directly in the field of view at the time (see Icarus, vol. 90, April 2, 1991, pp. 376-377). These two events alerted the community to consider the importance of the ever increasing population of earth orbiting man-made objects.

-Conducted the first joint pro-am expedition to China in 1987 to observe an annular solar eclipse.

-Took the first photo of a group of 7 geostationary communication satellites in one frame. See Aviation Week & Space Technology, March 3, 1986, p 73.

-Took the first photo of reentry of space shuttle orbiter. See Aviation Week & Space Technology, February 27, 1984, p 40.

-Took the first photo of reentry of space shuttle external tank. See Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 26, 1984, p 21.

-Organizer of most productive expedition to map the shape of an asteroid. See Astronomy, February 1984, p 51.

-Took the first photo of an occultation of a star by an asteroid. See Sky & Telescope, March 1980, p 261.

-Took the only photo ever taken of a complete grazing occultation process of a star by the moon. See Sky & Telescope, April 1982, p 426.

-Provided the first reported observation of a possible satellite of an asteroid in 1977. Co-authoring the report with D.W. Dunham in 1978, it set off a concerted effort by amateur astronomers and professionals to monitor asteroid occultations. Though this specific discovery was unconfirmed, it was in 1994 that the Galileo spacecraft beamed back the first image of a natural satellite of the asteroid Ida, thus proving the existence of a hitherto unknown population of solar system objects (see Asteroids, edited by T. Gehrels, p. 443, 1979).

-Was the principal organizer of the most successful lunar grazing occultation expedition (see SKY AND TELESCOPE April,1973, p.257).

-Conducted the first use of image intensifier technology and video to observe an outburst of the Draconid meteor shower in 1972 (see IAUC 2452).

A great portion of Paul’s life has been in earth satellite observation. This includes having documented the reentry of Cosmos 166 in 1967, several re-entries of the Space Shuttle’s External Tank, about 12 re-entries of the Space Shuttle itself enroute to landing in Florida, and continual observation projects involving space debris.

He was the youngest person ever to have an independent observing site under the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Moonwatch Program in 1960 (in San Antonio, Texas). In 1975 he was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society (nominated by Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams director Brian Marsden). In recent years Paul has presented papers at the International Astronautical Federation congresses on his observations of Iridium spacecraft, Ariane IV rocket bodies, and other visual satellite photometry applications. In June 2000, he was invited to present a paper before the 18th Interagency Debris Committee describing his studies of Russian Proton 4th stage ullage motors which are one source of space debris in geostationary transfer orbits.

Paul has utilized Global Postioning System receivers to initially survey a volcanic area in conjunction with the Institute of Geology and Geochemistry in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Russian far east in 1991. Then through agreement with Trimble Navigation he began to use Trimble GPS receivers to establish eclipse sites in the Amazon, Africa, Australia and Asia as well as for sites of 19th century eclipses in the USA.

Other noteworthy activities have included observation of a 1 meter size ullage motor #20698 at an altitude of only 92 miles with the unaided eye; the Russian Mir station from the middle of Seoul, Korea; the Mir from a cruise ship docked in Port Said, Egypt; the Mir from a moving train between Bulgaria and Romania; Iridium satellites in broad daylight from Scotland and Australia; night time Iridium flares from Iran, Crete, Turkey, France and Russia; observed 3 total lunar eclipses in one calendar year (1982); photo of two Russian space stations in one frame as published in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE; consultant to the Pakistan Upper Atmosphere and Space Administration (1988); interviewed on television stations in Gabon, Zambia, and China in connection with safe eclipse observation procedures prior to solar eclipses; invited speaker on United Nations Day at the University of Miami (1993); sighted noctilucent clouds in Finland.

Paul has also led expeditions to Venezuela, Mexico and Sudan to attempt to improve the lunar polar diameter; led expeditions to Guyana, Australia and France to observe occultations of stars by asteroids; observations of 4 consecutive orbits of the Space Shuttle from the tip of South America in one night; instructed Shuttle crew members of the ill-fated Challenger on how to observe Halley’s Comet in 1985;

 sighted a simultaneous aurora and naked eye comet from a commercial flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1997; payload integration engineer for the Midcourse Space Experiment satellite MSX, whose Delta rocket tank reentered and pieces of which were recovered in central Texas; organized and led expeditions to observe grazing occultations of stars by the moon and solar eclipses where Shuttle astronauts have also been observers; published popular articles on how to successfully observe occultations, earth satellites and eclipses in journals in the USA, China, France and Italy; presented lectures on astronomical topics in Singapore, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Peru, Mexico, Belgium, Jordan, South Africa, Australia, France, England, Canada, Guatemala, El Salvador and Japan. One of his most prized possessions is a letter from the late astronomer Carl Sagan requesting a copy of one of Paul’s technical papers.

Funding has been provided to Paul for just a few projects from the Federation of American Scientists, National Geographic Society and NASA, but the majority of his expeditions have been conducted on his own. One of his more exotic assignments was to await the launch of a rocket with an expendable tether system while staying at a Club Med hotel. Another was the 1995 Shuttle mission of the Italian Tethered Satellite System where he obtained low light video of the free flying tether (from Cairns, Australia) which was unexpectedly severed from the Shuttle soon after its deployment.

 

Paul’s unique videos of satellites and meteors have been used to demonstrate educational aspects of observation and have been shown on the Discovery Channel, Chinese television, The Learning Channel, ABC and CBS News, in England, Belgium and Germany, as well as having been appended to post-Shuttle mission flight footage by NASA. He has had a long interest in meteor shower observation, having witnessed a dramatic return of the 1966 Leonid Meteor Storm and then a brief outburst from the Draconid Shower in 1972 when he first used an electronic image intensifier and video. He was also a real-time eyewitness to the explosion of Apollo 13 while it was on its way to the moon.

On the personal side, Paul enjoys climbing and photographing active volcanoes (so far Hawaii, Aeolian Islands, Costa Rica, Russia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Mexico, USA, Guatemala, Sicily, Peru, Japan) and has raised basset hounds and participated in automobile rallies. While many of Paul’s endeavors have born fruit, he continues a so-far frustrating and unproductive comet hunting project begun in 1973 and enhanced with the purchase of 25×150 binoculars in Japan in 1980. It is one life-long goal to discover a comet. In the meantime, he has been a continual contributer to STARSCAN, the publication of the NASA Johnson Space Center Astronomical Society. He has jogged in Kuwait, Chile, Oman, Barbados, Sri Lanka, Japan,  Macao and dozens of other countries; he hopes one day to be able to afford to retire to a dark sky location somewhere in the southwestern USA where he can continue his observations unimpeded by light pollution.

During his many travels he has narrowly missed a bomb attack at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris, being shot at in the Sudan, traveled to Afghanistan and Kashmir without security and a few other places. as in the image below from the Yemen taken in 1994.