Glenn Chaple
I’ve been an avid amateur astronomer since the summer of 1963 when a high school friend showed me Saturn through his telescope. I received a BS degree in astronomy from the UMass Amherst in 1969, and then worked for two years at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, while receiving a Master’s Degree in Science Education from Fitchburg State College. From 1974 until my retirement in 2006, I was a middle school science teacher – first in the Fitchburg school system, then at Groton-Dunstable.
I co-authored, with Terence Dickinson and Vic Costanzo, the Edmund Mag 6 Star Atlas, and wrote the books Exploring With a Telescope (Franklin Watts – 1988) and The Outer Planets (Greenwood Press - 2009). I contributed chapters on double stars to David Eicher’s Deep-sky Observing With Small Telescopes (Enslow Publishers – 1989) and James Muirden’s Sky Watchers Handbook (W.H. Freeman – 1993). Between 1977 and 1987, I wrote a column on double stars for Deep Sky Magazine. From 1982 until 1994, I handled the “What’s Up?” column for the children’s astronomy magazine Odyssey. Since 2002, I’ve authored the monthly “Observing Basics” column for Astronomy.
I’ve been a member of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston since 1980, serving as President from 2015-2018., The same year, I joined the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), and have forwarded more than 79,000 variable star estimates to that organization. In 2006, I joined the Astronomical League.