[1] This inexpensive tool allowed amateur astronomers to contribute to some phases of serious research.
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.
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.
Mayer was a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers and a frequent lecturer at the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference.
Perhaps the best words summarizing Mayer's contributions and style appeared in The Griffith Observer memorial as written by Ed Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in the June, 2000 edition (Vol 64, No.