Telescope Reviews: When You Were A Kid Astronomer?

My interest was first sparked back in '72-3 while in Grade 5, when we studied from a series of small books on various aspects of science, some of which had little chapters on some astronomical subject. Back then I thought the Pleiades was the Little Dipper, and Orion's Belt, Sword, Rigel and beta Eridani comprised the Great Bear!

Christmas '75. I received a Tasco 40mm tabletop terrestrial refractor. It offered an erect image with an apallingly small FOV, and had click-stops on the eyepiece barrel/draw tube for magnifications of 25-50X, in 5X increments. About all I looked at was the Moon, as I was an Apollo nut around then. (And I didn't realize just what other neat sights such a humble instrument could offer.)

Then something magical happened. One cold evening in early '76, I noticed three stars rising in the ENE, almost perfectly aligned vertically. After looking at the top two (Castor and Pollux, I later learned) at lowest power, I found nothing of note. But the third definitely looked *bigger*, and kind of squashed. So I clicked out the eyepiece to highest power, tweaked the focus, and lo and behold! Saturn! I ran yelling into the house and tried to get anyone to come for a peek at this marvel. Not a stirring. Oh well, back out I went until I could stand the cold no longer.

Almost immediately I scoured our town's only library for books on astronomy. The most useful volume I quickly glommed onto was the original (1964) edition of A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, by Donald Menzel, published by Houghton Mifflin. I then got down to learning the constellations, the Greek alphabet, how to locate the other planets and ferret out the brighter deep sky objects.

Within a few months I was tracking down M13, M27 and M57 through my east-facing bedroom window, scope tube resting on the sill. Unsteady and dim views to be sure, but they were my first direct glimpses of such distant, alien denizens of deep space. I was hooked!

Several months later I bought my own first significant purchase of my life, with money I'd earned delivering newspapers. A 7x50 binocular, the brand name of which was 'Crescent.' Should have been called 'Excrescence', now that I look back, but it was a marvelous step up in clarity of view nonetheless. I was astonished to discover that in a great many instances I could see deep sky objects *much* more brightly in the binos than with the higher powered 'scope--in no time at all I eclipsed the 'bag' acquired with the Tasco.

But it was not until 1983, after my first posting to an Arctic weather station, that I upgraded to a 'significant' aperture telescope. And it was a 4.25" Edmund Astroscan, portability being an important aspect for a weather observer who could be re-posted at any moment.

Now that I've gotten well past the childhood chapter of my astronomical adventure, I'll stop here.