Photo by Brent Humphreys
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Star Gazer
By Audrey Goodson, July & August 2009
How one man's passion turned into a stellar DIY project
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When Howard Sims was a boy, he spent many a hot Georgia night lying in the grass, marveling at the stars in the vast sky above. Now, at 74, his view of the cosmos is truly, well…stellar. Saturn's rings, four of Jupiter's moons, the craters of Earth's moon—Sims can glimpse them all through a 300-pound telescope he built by hand in his garage. And the 18-foot-tall observatory with the 700-pound rotating domed roof that houses it? Sims built that, too.
"All my life, most anything I saw I could make," says the retired glass-factory worker and self-taught astronomer.
His home observatory, Sims says proudly, is a marvel to Madison County, Georgia, schoolchildren and his myriad other visitors. "Everything came out just real good. In the daytime I go fishing and work my flower beds, and at night I come out and stargaze."
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