Over The Moon The Romance Written In The Stars

The Stargazers Whose Love is Astronomical

- Julie Jacobson

Pamela Kilmartin remembers looking up at the stars as a child and pondering life, the universe and everything.

A Time Life book on astronomy – a gift from her parents – was an added bonus for a little girl fascinated by the night sky, who would go on to become one of New Zealand’s foremost space pioneers.

Pam and her husband Alan Gilmore have spent a lifetime observing and tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs) – comets and asteroids that could pose a collision danger.

Fittingly, the couple met at a Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand conference in 1971. Pam, a librarian, had started a career in astronomy in Auckland, and Alan was a Victoria University physics graduate. Two years later, they began working together at Wellington’s Carter Observatory. “We got along famously,”

Alan says. “The board knew we were an item, but they took the risk of appointing Pam as she had the background for the job. From my viewpoint, I had found my soulmate.”

The stargazing pair married the following year and, in 1980, moved to Lake Tekapo, taking up roles with the University of Canterbury at the Mount John Observatory.

They have since discovered 41 asteroids, a comet and a nova, and their work in the area has seen them recognised in the best possible way – having space objects named after them. The minor planet 3907 Kilmartin, discovered in 1904 by Max Wolf, a German pioneer in the field of astrophotography, was named in Pam’s honour, while the Eunomia asteroid 2537 is known as the ‘Gilmore’.