Re: What REALLY got me started in amateur astronomy...

From: Marty (movac5_at_webtv.net)
Date: 11/07/04 

Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 21:29:25 -0600

Hard to say if there was one thing that got me started. Maybe some
instinctive twinge left over from some lemur-like ancestor. I can't
remember not being interested in astronomy. I'm an early 1950 model of
the species, and so I grew up with the excitement of the dawning of the
space age, and watched the moving dots of the first satellites, pie-eyed
with amazement. I thought the planetarium at the University of Nebraska
was the most fabulous place on Earth when it was built, somewhere around
'57. (Page 32 of the Nov. 1957 Sky & Telescope has a small ad
announcing that a Spitz planetarium projector was shipped to the
University of Nebraska State Museum. aside from an announcement that the
Russians had launched a satellite. :) ) I still have my 1956
planisphere my parents bought at the museum, but I was never able to
learn the real constellations until I got into the habit of taking late
night walks in high school and started to learn my own constellations.
Then, I realized that I could learn the REAL ones, just like the ancient
navigators, and I pulled out that old planisphere and bought a copy of
Donald Menzel's version of Peterson's Field Guide. If there was one
event that hooked me hopelessly for life, it was when I took my father's
7x35 binoculars out into the back yard to see if the little patch of
stars I'd come to call "Nebraska" was actually the Pleiades... BANG!!!
IT WAS!! JUST LIKE IN THE PICTURES!!! And here I am...
                          Marty