Passion for Astronomy

As a young boy, the earliest recollection I have that astronomy might play a big part in my future, occurred on my grandparent’s farm in southwestern Kansas. It was Christmas time and the entire extended family had gathered to have a meal and open gifts. I believe there were at least a thousand people packed into a two bedroom house that measure maybe thirty-five feet on a side (hyperbole is such a terrible crime). While meal preparations were being made the kids were banished from the house to play in the yard until things were ready. A few of us made a beeline for the cars, jumped on the hood to stay warm and lay there staring up at the night sky. As a young kid, I knew nothing of asterisms or deep-sky objects or comets or planets or galaxies. I did know however, that looking up at that pristine sky that night changed me in a profound way. Obviously I’d seen the night sky before, but at that moment it all just kind of hit me . . . the sheer awesomeness of what I was seeing.

Fast-forward a decade or so and the second astronomical epiphany hit me. The night sky is in motion. Not from a spinning earth perspective, but from a cataclysmic, chaotic, orbital mechanics perspective. My friends and I decided to drive to a dark sky site nearby to witness one of the year’s more prolific meteor showers. I’d heard and read about meteor storms before, but never really expected to see one. What followed might not have been a true storm , but seeing two or three rocks burning up in the atmosphere every second for what seemed like several minutes certainly struck me as what a meteor storm might look like. The show was the result of the earth moving through a debris field that contained the remnants of a comet or asteroid that had been orbiting our sun for eons. While some may see this revelation as pedestrian in nature - I saw it as live TV in the sky. More interesting than any sci-fi, drama, action, mystery, or horror movie I’d ever seen.

From that point on I spent every spare moment learning all there was to know about the constellations, major stars, asterisms, nebulae, solar system objects, star clusters, etc.. Initially, this was accomplished with just a pair of 10×50 binoculars and a three volume set of Burnham’s Celestial Handbooks. I started off looking at the Messier objects. They resolved as gray smudges in the binoculars, but that was ok, I was learning the night sky beyond what the naked eye would reveal. Once I moved on to a telescope, it was much easier to locate objects because the wide-field experience had taught me how to star-hop to the more difficult-to-find objects. Now, when a person who is new to astronomy asks me what kind of telescope to buy, I always coach them to purchase a good set of binoculars first, learn the night sky, then move on to a telescope. A telescope’s narrow field of view brings with it a whole new set of frustrations that will be so much more easily overcome if you already know how to find objects in the night sky.

Fast-forward another couple of decades and my brother and I have built a 10” F/6 Newtonian telescope on an wooden equatorial mount. We designed it to operate as both a planetary and deep sky telescope by reducing the secondary. This improved the contrast for planetary viewing and double star resolution without compromising field illumination when viewing deep sky objects. Many enjoyable evenings were spent under the stars with that telescope learning the wonders of the night sky that open up when you add a little magnification.

Suffice it to say, there have been many inspirational moments in my lifelong study of all thing astronomical. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Nothing has ever captured my imagination the way astronomy has. I’m still as excited today to head outside and witness the wonders of the night sky as I was over five decades ago when this journey started.