Macey 1

Geoff Marcy, the Berkeley professor who has discovered more planets than anyone else in history (70, in case you’re counting), joined a few dozen decidedly younger astronomers last night to build a Galileoscope — a telescope like the one Galileo Galilei first built 400 years ago. My 11-year old completed his well before Marcy and we took it outside to look at the moon and, thrillingly, Jupiter and its four Galilean moons.

Berkeley’s astronomy department ran the evening as part of the International Year of Astronomy.

Lance Knobel (Berkeleyside co-founder) has been a journalist for nearly 40 years. Much of his career was in business journalism. He was editor-in-chief of both Management Today, the leading business magazine...