Nelson M. Richardson
BELLE MAN NEVER OUT GREW EARLY LOVE OF STAR
GAZING
Charleston Daily Mail
December 18, 1985
Charlotte Cavender
When Nelson Richardson was a little boy his father used to take him on the roof
of their home to look at the sky. "I was raised on the West Side of Charleston,'
said Richardson of Belle. "I came from a small family of only 13. Dad used to
take us on the roof to look at the sky. He'd quote the 19th Psalm and point out
the different constellations.' Richardson, now 66, never outgrew his love of
astronomy. For nearly a decade he has been president of the Kanawha
Valley Astronomical Society, a group which has been in existence longer
than anyone can remember. Richardson has been a member for more than 30 years.
The purpose of the society is to look at the stars and hunt constellations, he
said. The society meets the first and third Friday of each month at the
observatory at Camp Virgil Tate to explore the sky. Richardson says he was "the
daddy' of the observatory at Camp Virgil Tate which sports his name the Nelson
M. Richardson Observatory. The Kanawha County Board of Education kicked in
$3,500 to fund the telescope and the society built the 10-by-10-foot building
to. house it. The building sits on a 30 by 30 foot concrete pad and has a metal
roof which slides on and off. The observatory was completed in May of 1980.
Nitro High School science teacher Bob Gardner, who for 14 years ran the
planetarium at Sunrise for Kanawha County Schools, said the Nelson M. Richardson
Observatory has been a valuable teaching aid. "Every teacher in the county has
access to that observatory and can call Nelson to set up an appointment,'
Gardner said. "I think it's neat that students can go out and see the real
thing. We encourage groups in the school system and groups at Virgil Tate to set
up viewing times.' Richardson said even before the observatory was built he and
another member of the society, Bill Walker of Hurricane, used to meet with
students there. "We'd set a telescope up next to the parking lot for Kanawha
County school children,' he said. "I had been at a lot of different places in
the valley and showed things to those kids but I told Bill Walker that would be
a good place for a big telescope. That's how it got its start.' The observatory
has had many visitors recently with the appearance of Halley's Comet, said
Richardson who has seen the comet four times already. "It looks like a big
fuzz,' he said. "It looks more like a galaxy than a comet.' The comet can be
seen 15 times more clearly through a telescope than with binoculars, he said.
Because of the comet's appearance telescope sales have soared and telescopes are
hard to come by, he said. The comet appears only once every 76 years. "It should
be a naked eye thing by March,' Richardson said . "It won't be as bright as it
was in 1910. The comet is . now 60 million miles away from the earth. I think it
will get within 59 million later on.' He learned astronomy by reading, observing
and listening to his father. "He was pretty sharp,' Richardson said of his
father, D.K. Richardson. "He was one of those that followed politics all his
life and never got anything out of it. He did almost anything you can think of
but he was in politics more than anything else.' When his father pointed to
constellations in the sky Richardson said they had no equipment. Richardson got
his first binoculars about 30 years ago and his first telescope about 25 years
ago. For many years he has subscribed to the magazine "Sky & Telescope' and is a
faithful user of the Old Farmer's Almanac. "It seems like the more you get into
it (astronomy) the more you find out you don't know about it,' he said. "There's
always something new showing up.' Richardson said he has seen some unusual
things during his years in astronomy but declined to elaborate. "You call them
UFOs,' he said. "But I don't talk about them. People don't believe you.'