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Who or what inspired you and why?


meteoriot

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I wish I had learnt more on the subject at school. Watching a ping pong ball on a lollipop go round a light bulb wasn't quite enough to inspire me at the time but I certainly wish It had.

primery school wasnt much as they really didnt teach you that much but as i got older and went to college its there where i got into it but i think i can thank my dad abit more as he was into scfi when i was youger and he got me in to that so i thought id learn abit more at college! but as i say you can teach ya self more now days than you can back then!:)

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well for me i have allways been a sci-fi person since i was only a little nipper but what got me realy hooked into stargazing was 2 years ago some friends and i went to loch lomond on a canoeing trip and we made camp for the evening i went for water for the kettle form the loch and looked up :0 and all the stary milkyway was there i have never seen anything like it in my life ---- Astounding.

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Watching professor brian cox was on tv around december 2010- january 2011 made me want view sky's get telescope/binoculars

and reading up on alien/ufo's .

but have allways been looking up at sky's without telescope or binoculars looking at brightest stars since 2001.

when taking dog for walk.

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My neighbour was a science master. He wrote our text book. He invited me one evening to see the moon through his scope with a clockwork tracking mount!! Probably around 1968....That probably started it.

Then sailing across the Atlantic on a yacht gave me the most perfect views of the southern skies although only through binoculars.

Being a keen wildlife photographer, eventually after looking at Stellarium one night, I pointed my Canon 100-400 zoom at Jupiter and was astounded at being able to see her moons!

That did it!

Jonathan

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I know i'm on shaky territory here, but politics (or philosophy, they go hand in hand). I used to spend entire nights just lying in a field loosing myself in the sky, visualising our place in the universe. It sends chills down my spine every time, but i also got from it a sense of perspective. We are tiny, and ultimately some day soon (in the general scale of things) we will all be lost, forgotten. All our achievements will have amounted to nothing. We may delude ourselves with our material possessions and convince ourselves that we have to go to work, settle into the dull tedium of everyday life and die no better off than when we started out. The reality is that none of that matters, all that does is the here and now - us, and our happiness.

Then i discovered our good friend Mr Sagan :)

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Patrick Moore.His shoeless trip to Russia to see the eclipse (someone bought him shoes along the way) during the sixties. And when I was ill I used to get put out in the garden on a night so the night sky became my entertainment (despite terrible light polution) and as a family we all watched The Sky at Night. Even now, 40+ years on, I'm enjoying tSaN. Now me and assorted neighbours stargaze together whenever we can. Bagged 4 shooting stars, 3 satellites, the ISS and Progess the other night! Fab!

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I know i'm on shaky territory here, but politics (or philosophy, they go hand in hand). I used to spend entire nights just lying in a field loosing myself in the sky, visualising our place in the universe. It sends chills down my spine every time, but i also got from it a sense of perspective. We are tiny, and ultimately some day soon (in the general scale of things) we will all be lost, forgotten. All our achievements will have amounted to nothing. We may delude ourselves with our material possessions and convince ourselves that we have to go to work, settle into the dull tedium of everyday life and die no better off than when we started out. The reality is that none of that matters, all that does is the here and now - us, and our happiness.

Then i discovered our good friend Mr Sagan :)

"...I used to spend entire nights just lying in a field loosing myself in the sky..."

I bet anyone reading that would want to 'loosen' their stools in a field too!

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"...I used to spend entire nights just lying in a field loosing myself in the sky..."

I bet anyone reading that would want to 'loosen' their stools in a field too!

Pedant! I always get that wrong... took me ages to figure out how to spell 'possessions' too :)

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My best mate's dad was the local Episcopalian Priest. Father B. had a nice Unitron refractor, 80mm f/12, wooden tripod with a cool little map light with a red filter on it, and a rotating eyepiece wheel with 4 oculars on it. It was on an EQ mount with the old-fashioned slow motion control knobs on long coiled spring shafts so you could control the scope and track things easily at the eyepiece.

I was over to their place almost daily and bugged Father for months about the telescope, pestering him with questions about it, until he finally took all of us kids out to the churchyard where it was relatively dark and set up his telescope. The quarter moon was out, but the old fellow shook his head and pointed the telescope at a bright, yellowish star and invited me to have the first look.

It was Saturn! I was hooked for ever, hogged the eyepiece that night, and stayed with it long after everyone else had gotten bored gazing at Saturn, and then the Moon.

Father B. is over 90 now, and very frail. But I did see him last summer and spent a few days with my old friend. We had a chance to talk of many things, mostly of days long past as the elderly are wont to do. I reminded him of that summer night, and thanked him for a lifetime of wonder.

He reminded me that the wonder was God's, but said the pleasure was all his. :)

Dan

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Nice finish, Dan.

Myself, it was David Levy, Gene and Carol Shoemaker, and my best friend and spouse of 43 years, Susan.

Back in 1993, on our 25th wedding anniversary, Susan announced to me that she had run out of ideas for holiday gifts for me. So, unless I renounced my couch potato life and found a hobby, it was socks and underwear for the rest of my life. Fine, says I, I can always use more socks and underwear. WRONG, says she. That night there was a news feature on the upcoming Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact with Jupiter. I did some shopping, found a used 6" f/5 old metal tube Meade reflector on a nice wooden equatorial mount and tripod, and the rest is history. The telescope cost $400, to which I added $495 of JMI RA/DEC/Motofocus pieces. Hobo stew, I suppose.

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For me it was sci fi. I remember at school I used to get Science Fiction Monthly, with short stories and incredible pictures.

My favourite teacher at school was the physics teacher, he was doing an msc in astrophysics with teh opne university.

I ended up doing a degree in Physics w Astrophysics in 82. Only now do I have the location and time to start getting some looking gear sorted out

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Seems that there are quite a few posters here who are of the same generation as me - first got the astronomy bug about 1967 aged 8, helped by the Moon race of course!

Patrick Moore was my main inspiration, and one particular book of his: The Observer's Book of Astronomy, which I still have, and is one of those objects which I would save first if the house was on fire! I was also lucky in having an uncle who shared his interest with me. I have memories of looking at the moon through a long brass 3" refractor of his, on a pillar and claw mount, through a bedroom window in Liverpool. I was devastated when he sold it for 20 quid because he needed the money!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Stared out staring up at the sky from our hillside house in north Wales. Milky Way was clearly visible and dad & I used to spend quit a few nights outside with a Philips planisphere and a pair of bins.

Kept up an interest in science and engineering ever since (degree in Aero Eng - career in IT and project management but no real interest in pooters other than as a tool to do things). Step forward quite a lot of years to this spring and I was wondering what to get for Christmas with the combined beer tokens from several family members (choice of beehive - yes, really - or new TV at the time); enter Prof Brian Cox on telly and my interest in astronomy was revived.

Great social aspect to it in the local astro socs and setting up PSP2011 and some fantastics sights - I live just far enough our of Stoke for the LP to be bearable, even if I do now chuckle when I remember my dad moaning about the "bright" lights of a town 6 miles away in Wales and even being able to see dust lanes in the Mily Way!

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I was always intimidated by the night sky- its so massive the whole infinite size meant I didn't want to look- it does have this habit of making me feel incredibly small.

I started thinking about what to study next- and a friend suggested some astronomy. I was a little apprehensive but decided it might plug the physics gap for teaching science (my degree has chemistry and biology with some maths).

I started studying 'planetary science and the search for life' with the Open University in November (exam in about a month :-/ ) but loved it so much I took on more courses: in February I started the astronomy course, alongside a week long residential school at the observatory in Mallorca.

The thing was though the planetary science course just grabbed me much more than I'd ever expected. Then with the Brian Cox phenomenon (how kind of the BBC to run all the lovely astro stuff alongside my study ;)- well, I was hooked.

So a newbie who feels amazed by everything! I managed to get a shot of Jupiter and four moons with my long lens on my Canon and then some lovely moon shots. The excitement of seeing (through shaky binos and the naked eye) Venus, Saturn and Jupiter + moons is undescribable. I can't wait for the telescope.

Prepare to have some over excited posts about probably something everyone has seen a zillion times :o

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No-one thing really got me inspired, I even used to think sky at night was soooooo boring so gave it a wide berth.

Roll on 20 years and its recorded without fail or pain of death!

It sort of just picked up speed as I've got older, I suppose my ex girlfriend buying my first scope gave it a leg up bless her.

Now just kicking myself for spending money on cars instead of telescopes all those years ago.

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While always having a passing interest in Astronomy, what finally got me interested seriously enough to lay down the cash for a scope was philosphical discussions about religion and God etc. There I was answering questions from religious people about why I didn't believe, explaining things like how I couldn't get my head around how God was supposed to have a chosen people who were bronze age goat herders from a desert land on the eastern Mediterrainian circa 3000 years ago on a small planet around an average star in the outer reaches of a galaxy with 200 billion other stars and planets in a universe 150 billion light years across containing hundreds of billions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars each. I couldn't understand how a religious person can contemplate that and think, 'Wow, how special are we that God created this universe for us!!', while to me it disproves the Judeo Christian God at least.

Anyway, then I realised I was talking about this universe, contemplating it, realising I only have 80 or 90 years to exist in it before I return to my state of non existence like the 15 billion years of the universe before I was concieved.......and I never thought to actually Look at it!!! ;)

I guess thats why I derive probably more pleasure from the facts and figures about the objects I am looking than the same ol same ol faint fuzzy views. ie. Its the facts and figures that show how small we really are compared to the universe.

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Patrick Moore for me too. I got a cheap 2" refractor for Xmas back in the early 1970s, along with "Patrick Moore's colour star atlas" and "Observer book of astronomy", again by Patrick. I still have both books. The atlas has faded but I keep the little observer book in the car for the odd moment whilst waiting for the kid's school bus. The scope was given to a younger cousin years ago - I'll have to find out what happened to it.

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it was the night sky itself for me, in fact it was that very thing that got me into scifi too

Nick,

Forgive a totally silly question, but that has been bothering me for some time... That pic on your avatar... - is it J. Nicholson or yourself, or neither? lol

;)

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My interest was sparked quite unexpectedly when my brother begged me to watch a documentary series he had on DVD. That DVD set turned out to be Carl Sagan's Cosmos and it literally opened my eyes! It was such a frilling programme to watch! Watched it every night until I finished the series!

But because of that it opened my mind to finding out more, so started reading books on the subject and watching whatever video's I could find on the interwebs. Eventually stumbled upon a channel on youtube known as Sirius Stargazing done by fellow called TK who also has another channel under the alias of AndromedasWake. Watched his video's on that channel and his advice for someone who was interested in looking at the night sky was to get a decent pair of 10x50's, which I did, and started learning the skies.

Now because of that I've got a thirst for buying things and staying up late at night in the early hours!

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