What first hooked you into astronomy?

[Liev]

Hi there, my name is Liev and I’m a graphic design student at Leeds College of Art in the UK. I am basing my final major project on astronomy. I would like to know what first ‘hooked’ you into astronomy; what first captivated you about it, or maybe who.

For me, it was discovering my dad’s 1978 book The New Challenge of The Stars by Patrick Moore and David Hardy. It was the paintings of Mars and Neptune specifically, and the idea of other worlds orbiting the sun. I was about six.

If you would like to add something that could help to answer my question, that would be most helpful, and thank you. I will use this research to help develop and produce my final piece.

[Phil]

just seeing things for real and not in books hooked me.

[erick]

Seeing this as a child. The great comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965 :)

[sheeny]

I think I was really hooked at about 5 or 6 years of age by a book called "The How and Why Book of the Solar System" which of course was followed up with the Apollo missions on TV...

I've alternated between being an active astronomer and a dormant one ever since.

Al.

[rogerg]

I can't remember a time when I was not interested in space and astronomy. So for me it's just always been an interest.

However something that really got me solidly hooked to practical astronomy was when my uncle was given a 8" LX200 back in the early 90's. I was probably 13 or so at the time. There was something about the activity that just completely grabbed me - I'm not sure exactly what. I remember most being facinated by the whole concept, not so much actually seeing specific objects through the telescope - I don't remember what I looked at through the scope. I just enjoyed the whole experience of being out under the sky, the electronics factor of the LX200 and enjoying the whole experience.

Roger.

[okiscopey]

Same here, since the 1950's!

One big factor in keeping the interest through the 60's and 70's was the "The Sky ay Night" programme on BBC TV presented by Patrick Moore (or should I say Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sky_at_Night

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore

I was always more of a 'science' than 'humanities' kid so perhaps that's a factor. Using a planisphere and an old brass naval telescope out of our window on a crisp winter's night in southern Scotland was 'heaven', especially when I first identified Orion (a summer constellation in Australia!) and the 'Plough'.

Also, the 'space age' was just beginning and more to the fore in those decades and featured frequently on TV ... Sputnik, Echo, Telstar, Ranger, Gagarin, Gemini, Apollo and so on.

Good luck with your project ... hope Patrick Moore, a planisphere and Sputnik all feature in the design!

P.S. I work alongside graphic designers so I'm half in the business. I'd be keen to see some of your final work. I'm sure that others here would like to see it too.

[GrahamL]

maybe not hooked but I remember it well
I was about 10 early 70s cannoeing on somerset dam we had travelled
along way up into one of the smaller creeks that run into the dam itself
and as it turned out were hopelessly lost as was the crew who were suposed to meet us with food and camping gear.
getting dark we came across a sharp bend in the creek were the
dropping water level had left a huge thick bed of water hiacinth
about 10 feet thick upon which we spent the night .
The guy who had managed to get us lost was into astronomy and
spent the evening showing us around the night sky
It was great lying on your back incedibly comfortable and an amazingly
dark sky to look at ... we had only travelled about 10kms to far btw :P

[Ric]

For me it was turning my Mum's birdwatching binoculars to the Moon and seeing the craters. A year later Apollo 11 was on it's way and I remember looking every night to see if I could see the command module :lol: but you do that sort of thing when you 9.
I haven't stopped since.

Cheers

[Omaroo]

The Apollo program... followed by the prior series of Mercury & Gemini flights. I remember - like it was literally yesterday, seeing Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin taking off for the moon on TV. That was it for me. Anything "space" was thereafter within my zone of fascination.

My first real interest in astronomy, as such, was in staring at the moon through a rifle sight we had on a gun on our property to see where Apollo 11 landed. I swore I could find it...... :lol:

[Diamond Rose]

It was seeing Carl Sagan's Cosmos at 16, when it was first broadcast in Australia in 1982.

~ Bruce

[leon]

I can remember just standing out side when i was young and wondering what is up there, it just fasinated me so much.
I figured i had to find out about all this, and it has never left me, i still stand out side and just look up for ages, but now i have imaged and observed many things.
It's been about 46years since those young days, (boy I'm getting old) but age dose not weary the senses toward Astronomy.

Cheers Leon :thumbsup:

[ballaratdragons]

Can't remember when my interest started coz it has always been there. I remember being as young as 4 or 5 and gazing at the night sky regularly when I was allowed to stay up late (late being about 10pm :lol: )

I didn't know the names of things but I did know the patterns in the sky ( I didn't know they were constellations), and watched partial Lunar eclipses and meteor showers as a tiny kid, the obligatory Moon Landing on TV at school etc etc. The fascination has never left me, the only difference is that now I use a telescope rather than just my eyes alone.

So I suppose my interest came from just seeing the sky from a very young age and being fascinated by it.

P.S. I am about to turn 50, I have been into Astronomy my whole life, and I STILL don't know the constellations!!! :rofl:
Sad but true.

[Rodstar]

There were two things which, in concert, got me hooked.

1. A friend's dad had a small Tasco refractor, which my mate and I, all of 14 or 15 years of age at the time, used to look at Jupiter and its moons. That sight has never left me....I simply could not believe how accessible the universe is. Somehow, before that, the heavens seemed to my awareness to be impossibly far away. Looking at Jupiter taught me how I can actually have a direct experience of the cosmos. A year or two later, the same friend's family took me to an observatory at a place called Trunkey Creek, somewhere in the Orange / Blainey area in central NSW, and I still recall with awe the sight of Omega Centauri. Wow!

2. Studying planetary geology as part of the HSC in late high school. Geology per se fascinated me, and when that was combined with studying the solar system, I was smacked between the eyeballs. With all of the prizes I won in year 12 (topped every subject, including geology), I bought an astronomy encyclopedia and The South Sky, by Reidy & Wallace. I didn't have the cash to buy a scope at that stage, but just looking naked eye at the heavens from Turramurra (which had quite dark skies in the 1980s) with the aid of some reading material was magic.

With all the busyness of life with dating, marriage, children, I drifted away from astronomy for a long time, but when I received an inheritance two years ago, I finally had the chance to buy a telescope (and a very good one at that), and the rest is history!

Good luck with the project!

[astro_nutt]

The Apollo program as a lad..later on going to the School camps..then a re-interest about 6 years ago when I borrowed a refractor from the local Primary School over the holidays and saw Jupiter and it's Moons...been happily hooked ever since!!

[wavelandscott]

Initially for me it was the Apollo program with Neil, Buzz and the gang from Nasa...

When I got older my High School had a planetarium...I did well enough in class I got asked to help run it...

During university and early adulthood I drifted away a bit but always held a place in my heart for Astronomy...when my oldest son expressed interest in Astronomy it was an easy way to rejoin the hobby with the blessing and encouragement of my spouse.

The only drama is that I grew up in the Northern Hemisphere and learned the constellations there...now living here in the Southern Hemiphere everything is "upside down" still wonderful to see Orion just have to remember that he is on his head!

[spearo]

About three years ago, when I moved into my first house in a rural region and admired the dark sky. Just had to have a closer look.
frank

[mick pinner]

l saw a picture of the Andromeda galaxy in a library book when l started Tech school and we were studying Astronomy, it took me nearly 30 years to see it through a scope but worth the wait.

[Liev]

Thanks for your stories everyone, they're just what I need - and don't worry ballaratdragons, all I know is Orion and one of the Dippers! And I'm happy to post pictures of my work when I'm finished okiscopey. I can't say what it will be yet (I've been taught not to preconceive outcomes), but my entire grade depends on this. Deadline: 8 weeks. Ooh the pressure is on!

[Dujon]

Hello, Liev, sorry to be a bit late.

I, like some others on this site, am an 'oldie'. To the best of my recollection I became enthused about the night sky when I was an early teenager (read the '50s of last century) when I happened upon a book with many photographs of the delights to be sampled. The particular image I can still remember; it was a highly enlarged, and thus grainy, picture of the horse head nebula with roiling clouds of gas supporting it. For whatever reason it captured my imagination but, like others, other than futile attempts to see anything interesting with my trusty 2" Tasco refracter (also from Turramurra, Ric), my interest lay almost dormant for many years and activity was confined to reading about the exploits of others.

[RB]

The 2" Tasco refractor is a common story.
Viewing the moon from our home in inner Sydney in the early 70's was so exciting.
Reading every kid's astronomy book I could get a hold of and watching shows like "Lost in Space" :rolleyes: every afternoon really fueled my curiosity.

:)

[neB]

Early Sci-Fi novels.

Plus various other factors: space program, Astronomy at Uni, wanting to be an astronaut, etc

Always been a science kid, helped by older brother who was also.

But Arthur C Clarke, Alan Dean Foster, .....

[robagar]

yep likewise - Star Wars when I was six, the shuttle launches, Dr Who, and later my big brother

[mickoking]

Back in 1976 I was six years old, in year one at school and living in Mt Druitt, western Sydney. I discovered that my oldies had an encyclopedia set with an Atlas. In the back of the Atlas was a chapter on Astronomy, thats when it started for me.

I got my first real 'scope, a 60mm crapmatic in 1980 when I was living in London and from there Astronomy has been my constant companion.

Oh the nostalgia :D

[robagar]

ah, London... on a good night you might see mag 1 stars :(

[norm]

I don't think I'm that old, but I always had a fascination on all things Apollo, especially Apollo 11. I remember at primary school there was this magazine which was written specifically about the Apollo 11 missions and I always wanted a copy of it - I must have borrowed it a zillion times.

I was also fortunate around 8-10yrs old that my family had close friends in Coonabarabran running a farm and visiting Siding Springs on a few occasions. It didn't mean much back then, but neverless unique.

Then I had a crappy refractor when I was a teenager and like some, the hobby went away to other chase other persuits, but only to come back.:)

[Adrian-H]

I was Born in Mareebra Queensland, and Lived on Farmland up in Mareebra untill 6years of age..

What got me into Astronomy wasnt the sky there i never notaced it at all at that age, but what i did notace was that there was a black meteorite broken into two peices inside a crater one morning, on our land very close to the house, i remember it was still warm when i found it.. since i found that meteorite i questioned it and it took me into the realm of astronomy.

There where two peices, black in color, it looked kind of what larva looks like when it hardens, cept with some baby craters on it as if it melted and bubbled, they where quite heavy, each was about 2kg's both peices each one about the same size as a tennis ball.

they are gone now unfortnetly, the last one vanished when i was around 18, i am 22 now, i allways kept them well, no idea where it vanished off too.

[Liev]

Thanks very much everyone, from this point on I don't plan to collect any more research from this topic but by all means continue posting your stories. And when I've finished my project I'll post pictures of my finished work.

[stellarquest]

I was seven, and Dad promised to take to the movies. Our family was a bit broke at the time, and Dad told me we couldn't afford the trip with expense for the tickets etc. I got annoyed and stormed out of the house like a spoiled brat and lay down on the grass outside. It was just Summer. Dad came outside and we talked while laying flat on our backs looking up at the sky. It had just gone dark and the first stars were coming out. As we talked I guess that night I grew up a little bit, and just enjoyed my Dad's company.That night I also realised I loved looking at the night sky! Didn't end up going to the movie of course, but it was the best movie I ever missed! Been hooked ever sinse, and Dad got me my first telescope, a nice second hand one, which I treasure to this day. Also now realise how much overtime he would have had to work to make a boys dream come true.My boy is six, and he loves coming out with me.

[Adrian-H]

wow that sounds great stellarquest.

[DobDobDob]

Yes I agree with Adrian-H, that is a great story Stellarquest, a great story :thumbsup:

[stellarquest]

Thank you guys. I buried my best mate on Wednesday (Liver Cancer, please give to research if you are able) and it was nice to be able to share a moment in my life that is very special to me. My mate was getting into Astronomy before the bad news.Just as an aside, after I wrote in to our forum, I asked my lad what he would choose if he had the chance to choose between a movie and observing with me. He chose observing with me, and then stated that we could always go to the movies in the daytime on the weekend!. Kids learn fast these days!

[mikeash]

I was an 11 year old in a place called Kluang, Malaysia 1965. My teacher showed a group of us kids a view of the moon through a 4.5 inch refractor. I never forgot it. A few years later my Father pointed out the 'Seven Sisters' from the North of England, I remember counting the stars. Took me 35 years to do something about it . I still feel like that 11 year old when I get my scope out.

Mike