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 5th 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...
