I wish to pay a personal tribute to the astronomer, broadcaster and writer Dr Heather Couper (2/6/1949 - 19/02/2020) who died five years ago at the relatively young age of 70. She was a great ambassador for astronomy and somebody who took an interest in young people and encouraged them to be astronomers. This was true of myself and, by way of thanks, I want to write down how she influenced me into trying to become a professional astronomer.
When I was at Haileybury College between 1975 and 1980 I gained an interest in astronomy by accident rather than by design. At the school we had a number of different societies to which we could belong and one time, when I was obviously at a bit of a loss as to which one I should join, someone suggested the Astronomical Society. I knew very little about astronomy at that time. I was very science orientated (particularly in physics) but I knew very little about the stars. We were very lucky in those days because the school had an observatory which was equipped with a 4.5 inch refractor (probably a Cooke telescope). This was a splendid old brass instrument, mounted on a pier and contained within a brick building. Here is a picture of me standing outside it when I returned to visit the school in 2000:-
By then it had begun to look as though it had been abandoned. Looking on Google Maps today, the observatory is still there and the dome is in intact but it sits forlornly at the corner of a machinery yard. It makes me wonder if the telescope is still inside.
I was assisted in my learning about astronomy by one of the society members - a Scottish lad who was a five years my senior and who knew how to work the telescope. This was Barry Gardiner who later went on to be an MP and a junior minister in Tony Blair's government. I can still recall him saying to me that I needed to understand about Right Ascension and Declination and showing me a copy of Norton's Star Atlas. This book was probably the prime atlas for amateur astronomers at that time and in 1980, when I won the Powell-Davis Art Prize at school, I asked to be given a copy as a reward (rather than an art book)! So armed with this book and a knowledge of how to use the school telescope I began to explore the skies and after a while I was hooked (I can still remember my first views of objects like Orion Nebula and the impact it had on me).
So, as I progressed through school I remained in the Astronomical Society and as I entered my A-level years I became its secretary. This meant organising meetings of the society and in the summer of 1980 I arranged for an excursion to the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London. Of course I had a lot of help in this from my physics teacher and mentor Ian R Williams (or Doc Williams as he was known). Ian was a superb teacher and very inspiring as he had himself done a PhD in low-temperature physics. You have to understand at this time I was on course to study architecture at Manchester University. I had taken A levels in Physics, Chemistry and Art (yes, I know, an odd combination) and had an offer of a place at Manchester. This had been my direction for a number of years, mainly because I come a family of architects and it seemed like a good profession to go into.
So the day came for a group of us from school and Doc Williams to head into London to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. We travelled by train, tube and then by boat up river from the center, which was very exciting. In the morning we were to go to the Planetarium and to be treated to a show by one of the lecturers. This is when I met Heather Couper for the first time (she had been appointed senior lecturer there in 1977) and it was Heather who gave us the an excellent planetarium show that entertained us from start to finish. There was always something sparkly about Heather's talks and she always liked to introduce something slightly risqué and in this case it was alluding to how the constellation of Virgo was seen lying low above the horizon at that time of the season.
At the end of the talk Heather mentioned that she was organising an event for young budding astronomers later in the year and said that if we were interested we could put our names down for it. At the time I didn't think much more about it. We headed off to look round the observatory buildings and then down to the National Maritime Museum (the girls in our group disappeared off shopping in Greenwich!). However, later on when I was back at school I began to feel that I was more interested in astronomy and physics than I was in architecture and one day in dining hall I had this epiphany moment! I was going to do it, I was going to become an astronomer! For the first time in my life I realised what I really wanted to do with my life.
It was quite a turn around and there were a few obstacles to overcome, not least that I needed an A-level in mathematics. I didn't really know how to go about this. My maths skills had been somewhat mediocre up till that point but I had done very well in physics and I knew that I must have it in me somewhere. I went to the careers advisor who turned out to be Mr Bentley who had, by coincidence, been my maths teacher right up until O-level (I famously got 5 out of 95 for one of his maths tests). To his credit, he didn't try to dissuade me and I am grateful to him for not doing this. He laid out a plan for me and said that I would need to go to a college in London (a "crammer" as they were called then) and see if I could get an A-level in mathematics in a year. So this is what I did and went to Davies's College in Southampton Row and a year later I had a grade A maths A-level to add to my tally.
In the mean time I recalled what Heather had said about her event for budding astronomers and I wrote her a long letter telling her about my desire to change career and to come to her one-day meeting. I am forever grateful that she took the time to write back to me and to add me to the list of participants. Later in the year I found my way back into London and attended the day where a number of current astronomers talked about how they had got into this line of work. One of them was Dr Jim Emerson (now emeritus professor) at Queen Mary College, London where eventually I went to study. I can still recall how he said in his talk that it was determination and not necessarily brains that got you where you wanted to be in work.
So, after reapplying to study astronomy at a number of universities, I ended up at Queen Mary College doing a BSc in astrophysics. I continued to see Heather from time to time socially (as she was friends with another student on my course) and she was always encouraging to me and interested in my progress. I was so pleased when she and Nigel Henbest came to my 21st birthday party - it was a real honour to have her there (but then parties were Heather's thing!). My career in astronomy carried on for a number of years until 1992. I left QMC with first class honours and a very good background in mathematics (I had even managed to pass the General Relativity course in the mathematics department). It all went to my head and I tried Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge (which had a lot of theory of astrophysics in it) but failed. I picked myself up and dusted myself down and went to do a PhD at Durham University which I finally finished in 1990. My subject was cosmology and the large-scale structure of the universe. I was awarded my PhD and carried on for a couple of years doing research but eventually I found myself in the real world with what my mother would call a proper job in business.
However, my interests in astronomy continue and I will forever be grateful to Heather for being there at the right moment and providing me with the idea that I really could do this and get into the professional world of astronomy. We need more people like her and the other teachers that helped me along my way to inspire and to encourage.
Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest in their garden in Greenwich in about 1983.
All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2025
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