Bruce Sidell
A Tribute to the "Great Enigma"

The Stories  |  The Photos

This photo of Bruce was provided by his sister Julie

 

Bruce looking through his "Fire Scope."

He had bought a 16-inch dobsonian telescope, and the thing was a monster; heavy to lug around. So Bruce decided to rebuild it.

Since he didn't need the tube and mount, he brought it out to the club's annual December bonfire and threw it in. We joked "how's the seeing?" and he walked up to it and looked through the focuser.

Bruce posted something about it on an online newsgroup, complaining about "tube currents" and how the manufacturer never contacted him.

Perhaps a cooling fan would've helped?

This is part of an article from the September 1989 issue ( page 323) of Sky & Telescope magazine titled "Breaking the New-Moon Record" (author Dennis di Cicco).

The "Victor" in the article is Robert Victor from Michigan State university, who saw the slim crescent moon just 12 minutes before Bruce, Kevin & Terry. Bob Victor's sighting at 9.14pm shattered the record for observing the youngest moon (at that time).

Sky & Telescope article mentioning Bruce's observations

The following images are courtesy Terry Hunefeld, taken in 1995. The bottom three are from that year's DalMac.

Bruce Sidell at the 1995 DalMac
Bruce Sidell at the 1995 DalMac
Bruce Sidell at the 1995 DalMac

The following images (and words) provided by Joe McBride

Here Bruce is (far right), observing the last remaining seconds of the transit through his "Mighty ETX" as he called it.

This was taken the morning of the Venus transit, June 8 2004, at the parking lot behind the Cracker Barrel on Alpine. This location provided an excellent view to the East and the South. Peter Chan, Larry Campbell, Mike Murphy, Dave DeBruyn, Beverly, Bruce and myself were setup to view the remaining few minutes of the rare Venus transit that had started hours earlier before the sun came up here. The Weatherball was nearby to the south just over the highway. In this photo Bruce just announced out loud that he had seen Peter sneaking a look at the Weatherball and finally figured out where Peter gets his weather information. “Hey I saw Pete here looking at the Weatherball! Now we know where he gets his forecast from, Mr. big shot weather man here gets it from the Weatherball!” It totally caught Pete off guard.

It didn't matter who you were or what you did, Bruce always had something funny to say when your guard was down. Nobody was safe... even for a minute.