Background

There's always been something special about the stars, and whatever it is, it infected me while still in primary school. My first proper optical device was an ancient pair of 8x30 binoculars which showed me some of the most amazing things I've ever seen. In fact, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion couldn't hold a candle to what I witnessed, scanning along the southern Milky Way, alone late at night in the dark.

Not long afterwards, I received as a birthday gift a 2-inch Tasco refractor (with a variable zoom eyepiece and alt-az micro-adjustments), which meant now I would get even less sleep than before.

When I entered high school I heard that the school had an observatory. Early one Wednesday evening my mom dropped me off at the school, neatly dressed in formal step-outs. The science teacher and an older boy arrived soon after, and then the ritual of opening up the telescope began. I was seriously impressed. On a German equatorial mount was a 15.5-inch f/9 Newtonian. The ladder almost reached the heavens.

The massive thing was deftly swung and pivoted about and ended up trained on Venus, dropping down behind the distant trees. And then it was up the ladder to the Jewel Box. And that was it – we had to pack up and go home.

Not long after that evening, the keys of the observatory were safely in my pocket. A few nights later, a friend and I bravely opened up the telescope and he pointed it to the our first real target: M42. The nebula was low-down, and the finder wasn't aligned to anything useful. He took the first look, and gasped. I probably wet myself. Then it was my turn. Oh My God, there is was, the flowing scalloped nebula, bright as in my dreams. I nudged the scope a bit to compensate for the Earth's turning, and then it really hit me: we'd only been looking at the southernmost tendril of the nebula. It was almost sickening. It was certainly a confirmation of an addiction. Or rather, the affirmation of a life-style.

The 15-and-a-half-inch delivered many, many deliriously happy hours in the years ahead - the remainder of high school and then university were activities to occupy the time between sleeping and observing.

Sadly, the telescope no longer exists. A few years ago, the optics were stolen and the building eventually fell into disrepair and was demolished.

But the Orion Nebula, even without spacecraft ablaze, has never been brighter.

Personal web site

• http://www.psychohistorian.org/

Sketches

Objects sketched: 79

C 1326-609, Cl Bochum 10, Cl Pismis 16, Cl Ruprecht 160, Cl Ruprecht 53, Cl Ruprecht 84, Cl Trumpler 11, Cl VDBH 56, ESO 124-14, ESO 124-15, ESO 124-18, ESO 220-19, ESO 220-23, ESO 220-8, ESO 269-85, ESO 269-90, ESO 314-2, ESO 315-14, ESO 324-29, ESO 92-23, IC 1995, IC 2395, IC 2488, IC 2553, IC 2714, IC 4312, IC 4651, NGC 1165, NGC 1217, NGC 1365, NGC 1380A, NGC 1389, NGC 1531, NGC 1532, NGC 2220, NGC 2325, NGC 2439, NGC 2527, NGC 2559, NGC 2609, NGC 2609, NGC 2632, NGC 2670, NGC 2792, NGC 2808, NGC 2849, NGC 2910, NGC 2982, NGC 3201, NGC 3242, NGC 3293, NGC 3372, NGC 3372, NGC 3372, NGC 3372, NGC 3621, NGC 3680, NGC 3766, NGC 3766, NGC 3882, NGC 3885, NGC 3909, NGC 3923, NGC 3936, NGC 4103, NGC 4103, NGC 4463, NGC 5061, NGC 5101, NGC 5128, Slotegraaf J0941-5013, Spiral Planetary, NGC 2451, NGC 1976, NGC 5156, NGC 5234, NGC 6231, NGC 5786, NGC 6326.