Why I got into astronomy

I am a child of the Apollo years. My early heroes had names like Eugene Cernan, Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell. I remember my dad getting me out of bed to watch that 'One small step' live. The realisation as I looked at the moon that there were men walking around up there was fantastic. I loved looking up at the sky- or what was beyond it.

In later life, I spent some time in the army. Much of this time was spent outside, under the stars. When not actively engaged in looking out for colleagues or enemies trying to creep up on me and give me a bit of a kicking (or worse), then I would find my gaze creeping upwards. On one deployment, I found myself equipped with a Nikon catadioptric camera lens of gargantuan proportions. When fitted with a X20 magnification eyepiece, the views from their beast were phenomenal. During daylight, the lens spent its time looking earthwards but, after dark, when the earth based visibility was nil, I pointed it upwards a little. The moon would fill the field of view and, for the very first time, I got a glimpse of the disc of another world. I found myself looking at a yellow ball that looked like it had sticky out ears. It took me a few moments to understand what I was seeing- Saturn and its rings!

During my time in the army I got married. Postings and other activity in addition to my post military career choices meant we never got a honeymoon. Some 30 years later we decided to rectify this. Hawaii was our destination of choice and a beautiful place it is too. One of the sights we saw and visited was the summit of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on Big Island. Situated on the summit are a number of observatories. On our trip to the summit, we stopped at the visitor centre which had a pair of solar telescopes set up outside. With these scopes we were able to safely view the surface of the sun. We were fortunate that at the time, there was sunspot activity visible.

Throughout this time and these experiences I wanted a scope of my own. I finally realised this just after christmas with my purchase of my first astronomical telescope, a Skywatcher Explorer 150P Newtonian telescope. A newtonian is a reflector telescope, which uses mirrors tom gather light and direct it through the magnifying eyepiece. With my scope I have viewed the moon in all its glory, discerned the disc of both Venus and Mars and found the Andromeda Galaxy and the Orion Nebula. I am hooked.