Astronomy and Me: How I Started...Stopped...and Restarted.

It started for me with Apollo 8 and Patrick Moore.

Christmas 1968: your pre-teen author watching the BBC coverage of Apollo 8. On the screen was this strange looking man talking rapidly explaining why the mission was so important.

His words, still potent when seen and heard today, helped arouse the child’s interest in space and astronomy. I collected newspaper cuttings of the Apollo missions, glued them into a long-lost scrapbook and devoured all the astronomy books available from my local library, many written by Patrick. I well remember reading his 5^th edition of Amateur Astronomy.

My parents encouraged my interest: the first astronomy book I owned, received as Christmas present in late 1960s was Larousse Encyclopedia of Astronomy, a paperback edition in 1966. It was, effectively, a text-book of what was known in the mid 1960s, with emphasis on the Moon, planets and stellar composition.

I received another present from my parents, a small telescope with a table tripod: a cheap refractor. A toy in essence, but through it I could enjoy for the first time the splendour of the craters of the Moon; Saturn and its rings; and Jupiter and its moons.  A toy microscope was also purchased for me. Both presents and other educational toys triggered a life-long interest in sciences (little did the boy realise he would later spend a third a century looking at diamonds and precious stones through a rather different microscope: but that’s another story).

But I can’t recall watching the Sky at Night on a regular basis and as the public awareness of the Apollo programme diminished so did my curiosity in astronomy. ‘O’-levels, three science ‘A’-levels and an honours degree at King’s, London passed without much thoughts of astronomy. A subsequent career with precious stones in Hatton Garden, London eclipsed any interest I had for the heavens – perhaps I was too preoccupied with gems to bother with stars.

However the embers of astronomical interest smouldered occasionally; I recall staring at the many large (to me) telescopes seen through the large window of Telescope House in Farringdon Road, close to Hatton Garden, and casual glances at the Sky This Month diagrams and notes published monthly in national newspapers but certainly no observing since the time of the now long abandoned toy ‘scope. But I do remember being impressed by comet Hale-Bopp seen with my naked eyes hanging in the heavens when on business trip to Basel in April 1997 and explaining what a comet is to Swiss contacts.

After moving to Marylebone in the late 1990s, I would walk past a shop off Baker Street, 

glimpsing telescopes in the window and form a fancy of buying a ‘scope in the future for the time, if and when, I retired abroad. Little did I know then...

Perhaps you, too, do not think you share the so-called ‘passion’ evident in the amateurs you read about on-line, meet at astro-events or follow on social media. Take heart, a greater interest in astronomy can be reignited. For me, it happened on a walk in April 2011 when a curious incident in Regent’s Park occurred - I saw a poster on a notice-board.

On the spot, I decided to investigate...