‘I can show them the heavens’: meet New York’s traffic-halting astronomer
Joe Delfausse didn’t intend to stop traffic on a recent Tuesday night in Brooklyn, but Saturn had other plans.
The amateur astronomer, who has been a fixture in his Park Slope neighborhood for more than 20 years, regularly lugs out a telescope on clear nights and encourages passersby to take a look at the cosmos.
Delfausse began his Tuesday night observation on the sidewalk, but he couldn’t see anything from that vantage point. He was about to pack up and go home before he realized he could get a perfect view of the ringed planet if he stood in the middle of the street. That’s when the line formed.
As a crowd of people left an outdoor concert put on by the indie pop band Alvvays, Delfausse invited them to take a turn at the telescope.
Daphne Juliet Ellis, a 26-year-old musician who was leaving the show, took a video of the scene, which showed Delfausse proudly working the crowd. “He was really this kind of Zen Buddha in the space, shepherding a bunch of hippie kids who just got out of a concert,” she said.
Cars slowed to pass by, and despite his location, Delfausse managed to keep a smooth traffic flow.
Delfausse is 82 and has owned a home in the neighborhood since 1976. He was born on Long Island and attended Cornell University. As an adult, he moved to Manhattan before settling in Brooklyn. He worked at Citibank before becoming a math and computer science teacher.
Sometime around 1995, Delfausse happened to strike up a conversation with a man at a photo shop, who invited him to a meeting of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York, a volunteer-run nonprofit that promotes the study and public awareness of space. He’s been hooked ever since.
“The main thing I do is bring out my telescope where I know there are going to be people, so I can show them the heavens,” he said.
New Yorkers are cautious by nature, but not when they’re around Delfausse. “All of a sudden, they drop their guard,” he said. “They’re talking to the people in front and behind them. I guess we’re all starved for connection, and when you see someone’s eyes widen because they’ve never seen anything like that, you feel like you’ve made a difference.”
Ellis’s TikTok video has been viewed over 3m times. Her subject is just happy he’s struck a chord with a younger audience.
“I’m in my 80s, and you want to do something meaningful in your life,” Delfausse said. “I can’t think of anything that’s more meaningful than this kind of stargazing with people.”
Delfausse made clear that anyone can start stargazing. “You don’t need a college degree or anything to see Saturn and those rings,” he said. “When people look through a telescope, they’re all the same.”
Ellis said the response to her video has been overwhelmingly positive. “Most everyone mentioned how sweet and precious it was,” she said. “I wish the world was like this all the time.”