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.
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.
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.
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.
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!).
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.
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
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 but you do that sort of thing when you 9.
I haven't stopped since.
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......
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.
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 )
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!!!
Sad but true.
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!
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!!
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!
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.
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!
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.
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" every afternoon really fueled my curiosity.
What first hooked you into astronomy?
but you do that sort of thing when you 9.
every afternoon really fueled my curiosity.
