Jack Newton

Who is Jack Newton?

John "Jack" Borden Newton is a Canadian astronomer known worldwide for his publications and images in amateur astrophotography both in film and CCD. Newton took his first astrophotograph when he was 13 years old of the planet Saturn. His ground-breaking work in deep sky imagery and CCD images of the sun places him among the great pioneers of modern day astrophotographers. He pioneered and popularized "cold camera" astrophotography allowing for substantially longer exposures on film.

In 1991 Jack became the first amateur astrophotographer to make full color CCD images of celestial objects using a Santa Barbara Instruments Group ST-4 camera, making a full color CCD image of M57 "The Ring Nebula" and M27 "The Dumbbell Nebula". Jack took three separate black and white images, each taken with a separate filter in red, blue, and green, which were later combined in software that was being developed for amateur astrophotography by Richard Berry, then Editor of Astronomy Magazine. Richard published the first combined color CCD image of M27 as his magazine's cover.

In 2005, Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy named an asteroid, 30840 Jackalice = 1991 GC2, in honor of Jack's astrophotographic accomplishments and his and Alice's teamwork in astronomy outreach.