Shooting stars, called fleeting stars in Spanish, sometimes evoke wonder about the universe, and sometimes remind us of the fleeting nature of our own existence. Many go unnoticed or are only apparent to few. Others blaze brightly and leave a glowing trail to mark their passage. On August 13th, after the peak of the Perseid shower, shooting star Carolyn Shoemaker faded out, leaving a glowing trail in her passage through life as a planetary astronomer, as a mother, as a spouse, and as a friend to many.

Carolyn Jean Spellmann was born in Gallup, New Mexico, on June 24, 1929. She was the second surviving child of businessman Leonard Spellmann and Hazel Arthur Spellmann, a school teacher by training. Seeking out healthier climates and a college town in which to raise their children, the Spellmanns settled in Chico, California, where Carolyn grew up and went to college, earning her B.A. and M.A. while studying history, political science, and English literature. She later received an honorary Doctor of Science from Northern Arizona University in1990.

After teaching school for a year, Carolyn married Gene Shoemaker, a young geologist whom she met when he served as best man in Carolyn's brother's wedding. More than a stay-at-home mother and homemaker, Carolyn was an active partner in Gene's fieldwork, career, and recreation, earning a pilot's license to facilitate travel and rafting down whitewater rivers on vacations. When her children were grown, Carolyn joined Gene in an asteroid search program, learning the craft and the science to become recognized in her own right for her expertise. For a time, before digital sensing techniques and computerization eclipsed human capacity for observation and recording, she held the world record for comet discoveries.

The golden years combined asteroid and comet searches with geological field work in the Australian outback, where Carolyn and Gene crisscrossed the continent down under looking for and studying impact structures, the telltale effects of collisions of extraterrestrial debris like the asteroids of their search program. Fortune favors those who are prepared to seize it and in 1993, after years of finding asteroids and comets, Carolyn and Gene in the company of their friend and colleague David Levy found a most remarkable comet. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 provided a spectacular show for humanity in the first observed collision of a comet with a planet as its stream of fragments splashed into the atmosphere of Jupiter. It was a resounding confirmation of the importance of the search for celestial objects, including those on a crash course trajectory with planet Earth. For Carolyn and her co-investigators, it was a particularly sweet discovery crowning years of diligent investigation.

The magic years of observing and geologic fieldwork came to an abrupt end for Carolyn on an isolated track in the Australian outback when a vehicle collision deprived her of her lifelong partner. Surviving the crash herself, Carolyn went on with their work, finishing and publishing scientific papers and traveling to give talks on asteroids and comets. Carolyn lived out her remaining years in the home that she and Gene had built outside of Flagstaff before moving to The Peaks Senior Living Community, where she enjoyed the company of the other residents.

Carolyn is survived by her children and their spouses, her grandchildren and great grandchildren, her sisters-in-law, nieces, relatives from her father's extensive side of the family, and many friends and colleagues from the Shoemakers' geologic and astronomic work around the world. She will be missed and remembered as the glowing trail of her meteoritic life fades in the heavens.