"The ’s first image looked like all hell. A month later, in late June 1990, the telescope's political shepherd, , found out what had gone wrong. He called some interested local astronomers—, Don Schneider, and particularly —and since astronomy in Princeton, New Jersey, usually involves food, he invited them to supper at a Route 206 strip-mall Chinese diner. He told them that NASA was about to announce that the telescope's perfect mirror had been ground to the perfectly wrong shape. Jim Gunn, who had designed and overseen the construction of the telescope's principal camera, had also seen the first image and had thought the problem might be fixed. But no, now Bahcall was telling him no, it was the mirror's shape, the telescope couldn't focus, the problem was irrevocable. … NASA, of course, pulled off an ingenious fix, installed by astronauts dangling improbably over the telescope up in space."
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Non-fiction authors from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesWomen academics from the United StatesScience authors from the United StatesJohns Hopkins University faculty
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Ann Finkbeiner
(born 1943) is an American science journalist, known for the . Her book reviews have appeared in ', ', and '. She has also written three books and contributed to ', ', ', ', ', ', and '. For two decades, she was a teacher and director for a graduate science-writing program at .
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