First Light

I've been interested in astronomy since my early teens - a long time ago now! I have two early memories on the subject -

Watching coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing at my auntie's house, and seeing my first bright meteor whilst walking home from the local chip shop with my friends. This was particularly memorable - the meteor exploded in a fiery finale, causing my jaw to drop in amazement, and my fish exploded as it fell from the newspaper and crashed to the ground in all the excitement!

A few years later, I received a wonderful Tasco refractor for Christmas. Never having used a "real" telescope before, I couldn't wait to feast my eyes on the colourful nebulae at 500 x magnification that were pictured on the box. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was hugely disappointed with my first views. That was until I turned the behemoth instrument on the Moon. Although the views were by far inferior to those I would enjoy in later years, I didn't know that at the time, and the craters and maria I could see blew me away.

I was also amazed when I managed to find Saturn - my first planet - mainly due to the fact that the non-circular nature of the tiny disk was orientated in a different direction to the non-circular nature of the disks of all the other stars I looked at! With huge concentration, I could just about see the blurry rings.

Around about the same time I chose Astronomy for a school O level physics project. This was great because it encouraged me to read up and learn some facts on the subject. I now understood why I couldn't see those technicolour nebulae through my small (I now realised) telescope. I still have fond memories of lying in bed on Saturday mornings, reading Patrick Moore's Observers book of Astronomy over and over.

And so began my new hobby.

In this blog, I hope to cover a mix of recollections, records and pictures from my early delvings, and also a diary of my ongoing journey to understand and record what's up there.

I hope you'll follow me on the journey.............