I took notice a few weeks ago of the call for stories about how ACA members got interested in astronomy. Today I got the March [2001] newsletter and read Jason Shinn’s account of how his interest grew as a boy in West Virginia. As I did some observing with an old telescope tonight, and reflected on my own beginnings as an amateur astronomer.
My interest in astronomy started when I was a small child. I don’t recall my first astronomical inclinations, but when I was still very young I remember watching the moon from a car window on a trip to Grandma’s house. No doubt that is one of my earliest astronomical memories.
As a child, I was always pretty analytical, and loved to read. I had my hands in a lot of different activities and was particularly keen to discover how things worked. When I was six or seven I lobbied hard for a microscope for Christmas. This got me into the wonderful world of hay infusions and inspecting other interesting stuff at high magnifications. During the same general time I got several popular books on astronomy, and read these over and over again with a great deal of fascination.
At some point my family took me to an event that the ACA were holding in Virginia Kendall park. It must have been a public star party of some sort. I don’t remember the event very well, but there is one thing that I distinctly recall. I got a very good, long look at Saturn through the ACA’s 5" refractor. Some years later I was privileged to have this refractor on loan from the ACA for almost a year, and the last time I saw the telescope, it was set up at the observatory. To this day I have a high regard, and a protective attitude, toward that scope – I hope it has a productive, caring home forever.
It wasn’t until I was almost ten that I took over control of a pair of family opera glasses and started looking at the sky with them. I don’t remember having a great deal of success, but I did get some good looks at the moon and I did notice that a lot more stars could be seen with the glasses than without. At the same general time, I began to learn the constellations. I grew up in Cuyahoga Falls, and a combination of Akron light pollution to the south and high trees on our block prevented me from learning the constellations much farther south than Altair. But I got a pretty good handle on the northern summer constellations that year.
All of this interest continued with me accumulating more books, planispheres, and other printed matter. Most damaging to my childhood sensibilities, I think, were the Edmund Scientific catalogs, and the advertisements in Sky & Telescope magazine. Ah, if only I could get a telescope!
I proceeded to do just that. By the expedient of mowing several acres worth of neighborhood lawns, I earned enough money to purchase a 4.5" reflector. The funds were sent to Stellafane with my uncle, and he returned a week later with the telescope picked up from one of the Stellafane swap tables. On the first few nights I used the scope, I noticed a bright star peeking below one of the trees, and swung the scope to it. I was amazed to find that it was Jupiter! Complete with two equatorial belts and satellites, I was suddenly in heaven. I took the time and trouble to memorize Jupiter’s location relative to the moon, forgetting that the moon moved a good distance every day, and was not able to find Jupiter on subsequent nights. With the benefit of hindsight and superior knowledge, I now know that Jupiter was at the end of its apparition anyway and I would not have had a good chance of seeing it again until the following year. Another early sighting was the Orion Nebula – though this time I knew I was looking for it. I was ecstatic to be able to see this cloud of gas that had been so often reproduced in the books I had read years before.
Although I have long since abandoned the dented tube, unstable mounting, and chipped secondary that this telescope came with, I still have the primary mirror. I’m currently rebuilding it into as nice a custom OTA as I can put together.
Sometime shortly after this I discovered the ACA. It was not long until I was a regular at meetings and was attending star parties out at the state park. I still remember how we used to congregate in a big bunch out in the huge parking lot before the ACA had an observatory. The ACA was an important stabilizing force during my teenage years, and I will always be grateful to the people who mentored me not only in astronomy, but in life in general, during that time.
Nowadays, astronomy is quite different for me. When I go into my backyard to observe today, there is already a telescope in use out there. It is operating robotically, looking for asteroids or monitoring a cataclysmic variable star, or sweeping the Milky Way looking for novae. It figures out for itself whether it is clear or not, and starts observing at its own discretion. A computer in the house analyses the CCD images that it takes without needing me to instruct it. These are things I never even dreamed of when I was reading my childhood astronomy books.
Even with the chatter of the robotic telescope working away at its projects, I still bask in the satisfaction of being a friend of the sky. Walking out under the bright Arizona Milky Way to my antique Cave reflector earlier tonight, I wondered if perhaps I was still just beginning to be interested in astronomy. Slipping in a 50 year old eyepiece, I took a look at the Orion nebula, and had as much thrill as seeing it for the first time with my 4" years ago in Ohio. I’m an astronomical hobbyist, and everything I do in astronomy I do for the fun of it. Asking how I got into it is a question that probably can’t be answered. I can’t justify my interest in astronomy – it is just the way I am, it is something in my bones. That will continue until the glory fades, but I doubt that will happen. The thrill was still there tonight, just as strong as ever, and there is reason to believe that the sky and I are just beginning a long romance.
(Jeff Medkeff was an ACA member from approximately 1984 until 1990, and recently re-joined as an expatriate in Arizona. He’s a contributing editor at Sky & Telescope but recounts with equal pride his columns in The Night Sky during the mid 1980’s.)
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