I’ll be sharing the history of the magazine from time to time, a little at a time, in this blog. It’s a fascinating story that has witnessed astronomy grow in leaps and bounds as our understanding of the cosmos has deepened. And you can capture the whole history of the magazine on DVD for your computer — every page of every issue, 449 issues and more than 46,000 pages altogether.
The DVD also includes the entire histories of Deep Sky and Telescope Making magazines, two quarterlies published by Astronomy, 23 special issues published over the past 15 years, and other special features. It comprises a gold mine for anyone interested in astronomy. Check it out here.
As background, here’s the story of Astronomy magazine in 1975:
Astronomy’s circulation grew to more than 40,000 copies a month this year. Feature stories appeared written by a constellation of stars in the world of astronomy: George O. Abell on nearby galaxies; William K. Hartmann on Saturn; Carl Sagan on Saturn’s moon Titan; James Oberg on the Apollo-Soyuz mission; Donald Goldsmith on understanding quasars; and Michael Zeilik on the Big Bang and galaxy formation. Frances Weaver became the magazine’s managing editor and Penny Oldenburger the copy editor. For a brief time, Ray Villard joined the staff as an assistant editor — he would go on to be the press officer of the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages the Hubble Space Telescope.
In 1975, Steve Walther increased the size of the magazines to 80 pages each. The magazine now had the space to deliver articles on a wider range of subjects — observing, constellations, deep-sky objects, astrophotography, equipment tips, planetary viewing, eclipses, comets, and so on. The magazine was becoming well-known; in April, Sagan discussed it as he talked astronomy with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.