Career
This inexpensive tool allowed amateur astronomers to contribute to some phases of serious research. Professionally, Mayer worked as an interior designer. Mayer was the first ever to photograph a nova in its brightening phase.
On the night of August 29, 1975, Mayer was using an automatic camera to photograph the sky, hoping to track meteors large enough to survive entry into the Earth"s atmosphere.
After learning of the nova, he realized it was in the part of the sky he was photographing. He retrieved his negatives from the trash (there were no meteors on the photographs) and found a series of images of Nova Cygni 1975 in several stages of brightening.
Perhaps the best words summarizing Mayer"s contributions and style appeared in The Griffith Observer memorial as written by Editor Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in the June, 2000 edition (Volume(s) 64, Number 6).