The Astronomer Who Risked His Reputation on Darkness

In December 1995, Robert Williams, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, made a decision that baffled his colleagues. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at one of the emptiest, darkest patches of sky he could find — a tiny sliver near the Big Dipper in Ursa Major, no larger than a dime held seventy-five feet away. Fellow astronomers warned him he was wasting precious telescope time.…