There’s an old saying, to paraphrase Plato (and a number of others), that every king has a slave in his line of ancestry — and every slave, a king. I’d imagine the same holds true for doctors, teachers, and supervillains. So maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I have an astronomer way back in my lineage. Early in March, I was engaged in another astronomy-via-FaceTime session with Dad. With each new star cluster he imaged with his smart telescope, he asked me to look up some information...