What started it all?

[Dog Star (Phil)]

It seems to me that almost every person alive has a general, if vague interest in the stars above their heads. As we all know, that general, if vague interest can suddenly gestate into a full blown obsession.
What is the catalyst?
I've heard quite a few people say that for them, it was the moment when they first saw Saturn through a decent telescope. I'd have to agree.
But surely there are many other sudden "epiphanies" that occur to people to lure them into their back yards and dark places?
I'm only asking because I'm starting to suspect that I'm a descendant of the War between Mars and Venus millenia ago and grafted onto Neanderthals in a frantic bid to genetecly survive. My fascination with the stars is an expression of my racial memory and is symbolic of my home sickness. That, and it's raining and I'm really bored.

[madtuna (Steve)]

My interest stemmed from something I saw as a child.

I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness until I was 15.
As a witness kid in the 70's we were taught that Armageddon was coming in 1975. I don't think I slept much at all during 74, living in constant fear that this was going to be my last year on earth due to being a bit of a bugger of a child and not earning my place in either heaven or in gods kingdom on a paradise earth.

Early in 1975 while playing in a paddock one morning at the back of our farm, I heard a loud noise and saw a spectacular ball of fire wizz across the sky and dissapear over a hill about 1 km away.

All sort of terrifying thoughts about fire and brimstone came to mind and I literally wet my pants thinking my time on earth had come to an end.
At the time I had no idea that I just witnessed a meteorite.

It took the Police, Bush fire brigade, Army reserves and 50 local volunteers 2 days to find me.

Since that day I've had my eyes facing the heavens hoping to see another one like it....still haven't.

[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

I reckon you're on the right track Phil, I've thought about this kind of thing over the years and I've convinced myself it's about racial memory / deeply learned behaviour handed down over thousands of years of evolution.

(With apologies to the non-evolutionist members of our forum, you may write me off as a deluded cretin.)

There's something bred deeply into us in terms of sitting in the dark staring into the heavens, and sitting in the dark staring into a fire.

The fire staring is easy - after a days hunt the desire to simply cook the days catch, eating with the family/tribe members, sitting back & story telling, resting tired muscles in the warmth - even to us sophisticated modern peopel there's still something comforting and alluring about sitting around a fire talking. This is what everyone did.

Now staring at the heavens instead of the flames - this is where your more advanced primitive mind comes along!

Not just happy with surviving the day, eating another meal, and keeping war, these were the original thinkers, the ones who later became the medicine men / temple priests / alchemists / free thinkers / explorers / scientists!

Having done a fair bit of both stargazing and fireside bullshi.. um talking I reckon I know what I'm on about. That's my theory anyway, and again if you don't think it's right feel free to write me off as a deluded cretin!

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Steve, if you are deluded cretin then I must be one too. If our great grand grand grand ………. Fathers were not inquisitive sort of creatures we would be still living in the trees. There seems to be nothing more fascinating to men then fire, what is beyond one can see and the heaven above. This curiosity got us to where we are now. I wish that I could live just one day in the year 3000. To see what we achieved in thousand years.

[xelasnave]

What a wonderful thread to awake to on this overcast morning.

It seems apparent that our ancestors would have enjoyed a wonderous fascination with the stars ..they were not priveledged or cursed with needing to live their lives thru the actors of Neighbours or the victims of big brother... their minds would easily be lifted to greater thoughts under the stars.

And sitting under the stars they would of course sat with their dogs comforted by their loyalty and protection.
And the dogs witnessing our higher ideals lent their ability to smell an enemy at a distance to us so we could develop that part of our brain we now did not need... and so our brains developed that region formerly set aside in us to smell out our enemy to provide us with the power of speech with a higher level available foe communication ... this freed us from the animal world but also gave us an intelligence that finally gave us other things to entertain us at night...

But for some of us we recognise the sacred nature of sitting under the heavens with our dogs and to wonder about everything there is... we are therefore blessed.

We are fortunate that when bored or experiencing a perplexing emotional run we can share our thoughts upon our then personal experience.

alex

[Alchemy (Clive)]

idhave to say mans inate curiosity causes him to wonder, as i do even this day.... whats out there- i still enjoy seeing the detail in an image ive taken so i can explore whats there. I bought my first scope at 15 ( 30 years ago) the most impressive thing then was seeing saturns rings for the first time.

[xelasnave]

The only reason I rebuilt the Browning scope originally was to see the rings of Saturn..which funnily enough I never did..it was thru the 6 inch that I had my first view...
alex

[GrahamL]

you must of been terrified steve .. guess now your a little older the
sight of a meteorite isn't as likely to have you drop a puddle on the ground and head for the hills

[renormalised (Carl)]

I've always been fascinated by the stars....for as long as I can remember. The stars, planets, galaxies, the universe, alien life etc etc. There's no specific time I can say when it all of a sudden dawned on me, it's just been something lifelong in scope.

[JethroB76 (Jeff)]

Halley's Comet did it for me, ever since watching it as a ten year old I've been looking up.

[erick (Eric)]

It was a discussion in 2006 at work as to what was that bright thing in the sky - Venus?? I dusted off my very old binoculars, found some guidance on the 'net and I was away. It rekindled a very old interest I had from when I was a child and my Dad woke me up early to see Comet Ikeya-Seki in 1965.

[ngcles]

Hi Dog Star & All,

Well for me and I suspect a lot of amateurs around my age (let's say mid 40s to early 50s) it was the Apollo programme.

I was almost eight years old when I watched Armstrong and Aldrin on a rotten B&W TV at school and was utterly transfixed by it. I remember well that while most of the class were outside on the playground I was one of a large handful inside in the combined K1/K2 classroom at Oyster Bay Public School watching intently. Even though I was only eight, I knew this was history big-time being made before my eyes and was determined to watch every moment.

Along the same lines, I also remember listening to Nixon's (I am not a crook) impeachment speech broadcast over the school PA system when I was about 11 and having a similar appreciation for the moment (though I understood very little of the situation).

But Apollo did it for me. Such was my interest I was given a telescope as a gift for Christmas that year I think (or the year after, it's hard to know so far back) and joined the James Cook Astronomers Club (this was the original name of Sutherland Astronomical Society) in 1972 as a junior.

Best,

Les D

[Ian Robinson]

I'm a child of the 1960s , my interest in space was energised by the heady days of Geminis , Apollos , and the russian equivalents , and by copious doses of Doctor Who , Lost in Space , The Invaders , Star Trek , and Prof Julius Sumner Miller , and a natural curiousity about everything , and my first telescope when I was about 9 yo (an AOS table top 50mm) .

I used to write regular letters to the Chief Astronomer at Sydney Observatory and asked lots of questions - he aways wrote back and answered my questions , must have been a very nice man in the job in the late 1960s.

I must have read every single book on astronomy in Mayfleld Public Library several times by the time I was 11 y.o. (I got the nickname "the Professor" about then and it and similar stuck with me (even now I sometimes meet people who knew me then and as a kid and young man and am greeted with "hi Prof" , rather than "hi Robbo" I usually get).

Joined the BAA about then, and met Irene Towers one day when she was doing one of her outreach talks at the Store on Hunter Street (I became a frequent visitor to her place - I must have been a real pest) , a year or two later I asked dad to pay for me to put an ad in the paper so I could start an astronomy club (Irene Towers, Jim Tattersall , Alan Elliot , Matty Morel , and I were the founding members of what became the original Newcastle Astronomical Society and later the Astronomical Society of the Hunter, met George Levarnos about then , he's always been a superb telescope maker). Fond memories of meetings once a month at each others homes , we each brought a plate or a cake or a pack of biccies, and we'd talk about astronomy , telescopes , telescope making , and socialise informally ... was great fun , a lot to be said for starting a club if there is no club locally.

I had decided by the time I was 9 or 10 that religion was rubbish and nothing more than fairy tales and load of garbage that simply didn't hang together , this was after asking too many hard questions at scripture of the priest (I was CoE) at school (it was compulsory in state schools then) and at Sunday school .... my parents were evetually asked to not bring me again as I was too "disruptive" , I had became an athiest and am now what you could call a hard core skeptic and athiest - I question everything.

PS : my memories of Apollo 11 are that no one I knew went to work or school that day , and we (the whole family) watched the landing - glued to the TV - in real time (I as far as I recall) on the day , pretty much the most exciting day in my life apart from -
my first full sexual encounter,
my wedding day
the birth of my kid
and
my first big jewie (over 50 lbs which took a long time and lot of jew between 10 and 40 lbs to find , was a monster , 73 lb and too big to fit in the bath tub (which where I put it when I got it home and need to keep it on ice before dealing with scaling, gutting and butchering it the next day - after getting some sleep - sleep ? yeh sure .... and my 5 yo son getting up in the morning to have a wee and discovering the fish in the bath , the gasp and squeal , and him running into our bedroom to tell us there was a monster in the bath. He was used to seeing big snapper and tailor and trevally and the occasonal jewie , but never seen a fish that big).

Hard to believe that Apolo 11 was almost 40 years ago .

[Ric]

All started when I was 8, I was Owl watching with my mum and turned the binoculars onto the Moon out of interest after that I was hooked.

A year later man walked on the Moon and that only served to seal the obsession that has lasted 40 years

Cheers

[gman (Grant)]

When did it all begin for me??

I have always had an interest in space from as far back as I remember.
Sci Fi books, TV and movies always had me hooked. Being allowed out late during the summer holdays in the early seventies and we would lay on the grass looking skyward and talk about what was out there.

Real thought came into it in my late teens when I realised that by understanding how the universe was made, humans would really be able to work out where we came from/how did we get here.
This also prompted a niggling idea in the back of my mind that we would not find thease answers in my life time so I had to do my bit for mankind to keep the human race going.

3 kids later and I feel I've done my bit.
So now I can sit back and enjoy the views and let the next generation/s carry the torch so to speak.

[astroturf (Bryan)]

I witnessed the Moon landing on the next door nieghbours TV (TV's were only a new thing in NZ then & we couldn't afford one)

I tried to see Halley's comet in 1986? but saw a smudge - I think

But what really got me going, was following events as shoemaker-levy (string of pearls) smashed into Jupiter, from the Sydney observatory

When I got home from there I discovered that you could see Jupiters moons with a pair of bino's
more recently a guy down the road dumped an old 6" saxon newt out the front of his house, which somehow followed me home, It didn't work so well but definately started the interest in everything celestial

this led to the purchase of an LX90 which gets used at every opportunity
For me there is far too much out there to see in a life time(mine) & it is a never ending obsession i don't think I'll ever tire of

Bryan

[astro_nutt]

Hi all!
For me if was the Apollo missons...I was 9 years old in Primary school ..we watched the Apollo 11 launch, Moon landing and return to Earth..it truely brought out the astronauts in us boys!!!...later on at College camp at Anglesea..out teacher gave us a tour of the sky..we were all in awe of the distances etc involved..and how we are part of all we see in the heavens..
I began to experiment with magnifiers, old lenses from a garage sale..then 9 years ago a chance to borrow an old KMart focal 60mm refractor..which worked quiet well!!!...no plastic on this baby!!..all it needed was a solid stand..I then brought my first scope soon after..and a few more since..I have yet to tire from viewing the same objects..I still have the same sense of wonderment when I was a kid..the challenge of discovery and the rewards when I do..even just to lie back on a clear night and think.."yeah..I am part of all this!"
Cheers!

[GrahamL]

For me it was an idiot guide on a canoeing trip on somerset
dam .. he got us so lost up one of the feeder arms into it.. no one had a clue were we were ...(20kms upstream )..of the meeting point .we gave up at dark and pulled into a sharp bend in the stream that was full of hyacinth which made a great bed ... knackered we all lay down on this thick bed of vegetation and drifted off to sleep ..the guy who got us lost up there talked a little about the constellations above and we saw a couiple of moveing stars to..it was just one of those you had to be there moments.. completely dark
no idea were you are but still strangely comfortable with whats in front of you...I was to young to grasp the apollo missions despite watching them all on the crusty old B/W tv the education dept had .