A Telescope, A Young Boy's Imagination, Lasting Impressions

My fascination with the night sky began many years ago when I was a young lad growing up in Southeastern Oklahoma. The night skies in that area back then, and even still today, were dark and clear with low levels of light pollution interfering with your ability to clearly see the thousands of stars. I often would spend hours after dark standing out in the small field next to my grandparents home and gaze towards the sky. A highlight would be if a meteor streaked by or on occasion I could  catch a glimpse of a satellite speeding high over head appearing to be a very dim and small point of light. I knew a few of the constellations, but not many and understood that some of the points of light I saw were planets. About the only ones I could identify for sure was Venus which most often hovered low in the western sky and was very bright along with Jupiter. I must have been somewhere around 14 years old when my parents bought for me a simple and inexpensive telescope. That simple devise opened up a whole new universe and offered me a chance to capture a first glance at the wonders of the moon and a few of the planets.

A Similar Version of my telescope (Internet Photo)

The telescope was a simple reflecting model, also known as a Newtonian, the kind with a concave mirror in the bottom where light entering the top would bounce back towards another smaller mirror near the front that angled the light thru an eyepiece attached to the side. It was a low power beginners model with a small 3 inch mirror which did not have much light gathering or resolving power. Even so, it offered great views of the moon and as I was to discover interesting views of some of the planets.

At my first views of the moon, I was astonished at what I saw. Even though I had many times before seen photos of the moon in science books, for the first time I was able to see it live for myself. And those views were incredible. Craters and mountain ranges and dark Maria (seas) became at once real and immediate. Each night its appearance changed as the moon's orbit caused its terminator shadow to wax and wane. I could not get enough of it, but one evening I turned my small little telescope toward a glowing spot in the sky. Its appearance was different than the stars, a softer tone with a slight yellow color. It hovered rather high in the sky almost calling out to me to have a look.

Keith Bridgman Photo 

It took some time to eventually locate the small glowing speck and when I finally brought the light into focus I realized I was for the first time seeing the ringed planet Saturn. It floated inside my view against a solid black background like it was magically suspended on an invisible string, a small image but unmistakably a real live planet...with a tilted golden ring circling it.

Internet Photo - A slightly larger view of what I saw

 I sat outside long past when I should have retired inside, watching it quiver thru the unstable atmosphere. From that moment on, Saturn became my favorite planet and that little telescope became my favorite possession.

Eventually, I also pointed it toward what I knew to be Jupiter, the largest planet, and in spite of the poor optics I was able to see several of Jupiter's moons as pin points of light extending to either side. Most exciting though was when I first noticed the faint band of clouds that circled the planet. There was no color to any of it, just gray and white and most of the gray was barely discernible.

Internet Photo

Over time I found Mars, the red planet. and on a clear night I could just make out one of its polar ice caps as a white smudge on one end of the small reddish orb. Of course back then I didn't even think about taking photographs of what I saw, but I did at times make crude drawings. It was quite an exciting adventure for it was during that time America's manned space program was just getting off the ground and that little telescope made a young lad feel, however small it might have been, as though he were part of that grand adventure.

Mars similar to what I viewed - Internet Photo

Today, I will from time to time spend a couple hours out on a dark clear evening and point my camera skyward to capture the wonders of the Milky Way.

Keith Bridgman photo

When I do, I am often taken back to those early years and that simple little telescope that helped to open up the imagination of a young boy. There were few things my parents ever purchased for me that generated a lasting impact; one was that simple astronomical devise. A lifetime of memories were generated as I viewed the heavens, the kind of memories that only can be imprinted into a young boy's imagination and dreams.