Back in the day, I took a class in astronomy. Here I made the remarkable discovery that the whole universe contains just 164 stars. I proved this with an extra credit project, so you know you can trust my conclusions. The idea was to count the stars in a small section of sky, run the number through an equation and — Presto! — get a small grade bump. Before beginning, however, I made sure to recite the time-honored college student affirmation,

“That’s due tomorrow!?”

Then, dragging my roommate out at about 11 p.m. to help me, I saw to my horror that there were no stars, only a dense cloud cover.

“Where did the stars go?” I howled.

“They went to bed, which is where I should be,” grumbled my roommate.

“You’ve seen stars before. Think! How many were there?” I asked frantically.

“Zillions,” she yawned. “Why don’t you just make up some number?”

“Because that’s cheating. Come on, we know there are four stars in the big dipper’s bucket, how many are in the handle?” I asked, scouring the sky.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Three maybe — oh look! There’s one — no, wait. I think that’s an airplane.”

“Great! See?” I said with mounting hope. “Seven stars in the dipper, one airplane. We’re already up to eight! If it’s in the sky, I’m counting it.”

“I thought you were only supposed to count the stars in a small section of the sky?” she said, staring at the clouds.

“Well, yes, but obviously that won’t work,” I said, staring in the opposite direction.

“This is better than straight up cheating?” she asked.

“Much better. You’ll see.” I said.

And it was, too. Later, I ran the equation. The result looked unlikely, but then, numbers always look unlikely when I calculate them. Because now it was very late, and I needed to pad the word count … I mean because I am scrupulously honest, I reported exactly how I had arrived at my conclusion. The professor, who luckily had a sense of humor, gave me an A and a comment that perhaps I should explore other majors.

Oh well. We can’t all be good at everything. Recently, though, I learned about a person who, unlike me, is exceptionally good at counting stars. I think this might just be the coolest talent I’ve ever heard of. The man was Robert Evans, a retired minister who lived in Australia until he passed away in November 2022 at the age of 85. Like many people, he liked to look at the stars through his home telescope. Unlike anybody else, however, he could spot supernovas. This is an insanely difficult thing to do. Bill Bryson, in his book “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” writes that finding a supernova is a little like covering a dining room table with a black cloth and scattering a handful of salt over it. Multiply that by a Walmart parking lot full of tables covered with black cloth and salt. Now, have someone place a single grain of salt on one table. Your job is to find it. Making it harder still is that supernovas don’t stay visible for long, just a few months. But, if you have a reasonable telescope and a savant-level skill for memorizing star fields, you can find them.

At one point, the scientific world, with the best brains and telescopes, had found something like 40 supernovas. Robert, by himself, found 30 more. As computers and artificial intelligence have gotten better, more supernovas are being found more consistently, but Robert said he wouldn’t stop hunting them himself; he liked the challenge. Besides, he could still beat the computers sometimes. Charmingly, his wife said that he wasn’t all that great at finding stuff around the house.

Like I said, we can’t all be good at everything. Besides, which would you rather find — the boring lost shopping list or a cool supernova? Me too. Of course, I can’t find either one. But due to a tricky eye surgery a few years ago, I now see stars that aren’t there at all. We all have our gifts.

Anneli Byrd is an academic adviser in Weber State University’s Student Success Center.

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