Reading this thread is really wonderful! So many good memories come bubbling up from the darkness...
I cannot remember the fellow's name, but we had an Astronomy prof who did our labs that was a most interesting fellow. Lab was held on the lawn by the old Observatory (Now demolished) and we had several Celestron Newtonian 6" scopes to play with. Light pollution was bad even back then ('84-'85) and the scopes were fairly useless save for big, hard-to-miss items. We had a good evening once with a half-Moon up, and the prof said we could stick around after the parking lot lights shut down at 10:30 so the viewing would be better. About 3/4 of the class left, but some of us stayed and talked for the couple of hours until the lights shut down. Somehow beer made it's way in. Just a truly pleasant evening, talking of stars and such, and other things of interest. Turns out, our prof was, at one time, a "trajectory designer" for ICBMs, specifically MIRV weapons ("Like horseshoes, only bigger.") Funny guy. In that one evening, I probably learned more about orbital mechanics, astronomy techniques and other matters thereof than I had ever known before. Understand, I was a huge geek about these things and knew a lot (or so I thought), but, wow...
I was thinking about that fellow over the last weekend when Mrs. Brewingfrog and I were out stargazing in the deep darkness of rural Texas.