Susan bought a telescope. Not just any fly-by-night model, mind you, but an expensive, high-tech instrument. On the first cloudless night, she aimed the scope at Jupiter, peered into the eyepiece, ...

A lyric from an early 1960s anti-war song laments: “Where have all the young men gone?” Add the words “and women,” and you describe the current plight of amateur astronomy. Teens seem to be especially ...