Hello everyone, sad news to convey, This message was posted on ICQ FB
page today.
Joe Rao
I received a phone call earlier today from Michele Machholz, informing
me that her husband Don died early this morning.  Don -- who was one of
America's premier comet hunters -- had seen one of my virtual PowerPoint
programs on the Tau Herculid meteor shower last spring and extended an
invitation to Renate and I to come his home in Wikieup, Arizona, to
watch for the shower.
Both he and his wife, opened their amazing "Stargazer Ranch" to us,
graciously hosting the two of us for a few days at the end of May. Don
was so very happy to show off all of his optical equipment, ranging from
an 18-inch Dobsonian reflector, to home-made 29 x 130 binoculars, to one
of his very first telescopes, a 1960's RV-6 Dynascope, still in almost
pristine condition.  Don discovered a total of 12 comets and as he took
me on a stroll through the huge garage which housed his scopes, he would
point to each one and proudly say: "I discovered six comets with the Dob
. . . I found 96P with the big binos . . . etc"
While staying at his ranch, I was honored to observe the predawn sky on
Memorial Day morning under a Bortle-2 sky using his big binoculars,
while he quietly scanned the sky with a 10-inch scope looking for
comets; all while soft instrumental music was playing in the background.
Thanks to robotic cameras and orbiting satellites, which usually catch
incoming comets long before they are visible to human eyes, the
meticulous art of comet hunting nowadays is practiced by very few
individuals.
But Don would assiduously arise early each clear, moonless morning to
conduct his search.
On the evening of May 30th, Don, Michele, Renate and I watched for
meteors.  Because the Tau Herculids were expected to be faint, Don
utilized a unique homebuilt "binocular chair" and carefully scrutinized
various parts of the sky with 25 x 100 binoculars looking for faint
streakers . . . and he actually caught a few.  Overall,we didn't see as
many meteors as we would have liked, but the four of us still had a
grand time under a dark Arizona sky.
He was a soft-spoken man and I was amazed at his seeming encyclopedic
knowledge of the smallest bodies of the solar system: meteors, asteroids
and especially comets.  He was also a colorful raconteur, having given
many lectures and presentations in the West . . . and I was hoping he
would be able to come here to the East next spring to share a few of
those anecdotes with others.
Donald Edward Machholz, born October 7, 1952 in Portsmouth, Virginia,
was an American amateur astronomer who was the leading visual comet
discoverer, credited with the visual discovery of 12 comets that bear
his name. Machholz had spent more than 9,000 hours comet-hunting in a
career spanning over 50 years.
These comets include the periodic comets 96P/Machholz, 141P/Machholz,
the non-periodic C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) that were visible with binoculars
in the northern sky in 2004 and 2005, C/2010 F4 (Machholz), and most
recently C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto). In 1985, comet Machholz
1985-e, was discovered using a homemade cardboard telescope with a wide
aperture, 10 inches across, that gave it a broader field of view than
most commercial telescopes.
Machholz is one of the inventors of the Messier Marathon, which is a
race to observe all the Messier objects in a single night.
A wonderful man . . . to the astronomical world, and especially those
with an interest in comets, he will be missed!