“Messier Cheated”

One single event ignited my passion for Astronomy. I had mounted the family’s Palomar 8x50 binoculars with the broken eyecup onto an old camera tripod. I found something that looked like a wing nut with flat tangs that I screwed to a four inch long piece of tomato staking. The wing nut and wood easily threaded onto the stud of the tripod. I just opened the binoculars and closed them over the piece of wood where they stayed clamped by themselves.

I could only tilt the binoculars up to about a forty-five degree angle but that was ok because my target had risen above the eastern horizon just a few hours earlier. I saw them before I had a chance to focus. What was brought into focus were four bright pinpoints of light all in a line running at an angle, one on one side and three on the other side of Jupiter. I was mildly stunned. Not just at the sight of what I was seeing but the realization that this is “real.” It was like being there. It was like the difference between watching a ballgame on TV and going to the stadium. It was a cold clear winters night and it took some convincing to get Dad away from Monday night football. He didn’t say much but I could tell he was impressed (with the moons, that is).

After several trips to the library, a subscription to Astronomy magazine, many yard care jobs (Dad paid for half), there she sat, in the living room. One Meade Model 591 6” motor driven Newtonian reflector with drive corrector and right angle (not recommended) 6x30 finder scope…in the box. I was more excited than Wiley E. Coyote with a new pair of ACME rocket powered roller skates.

I opened the box and the first thing that hit me was the smell, much better than new car smell. I don’t know what it was but it never went away. I love that smell. I put the mount together and bolted the mirror cell, spider and finder to the tube. This telescope lasted me several years of wonderful observing.

I had decided to keep a journal. Here is just one entry: 1980 “…M32 looks like a fuzzy star. I have found myself too wrapped up in finding new objects. I should probably spend more time looking at the ones I’ve already found….”. I lived between Seattle and Everett Washington and on a cloudy night you could read by the pinkish glow from the two cities. Deep sky objects were more fun to hunt for than to observe.

This was before the present day era of GOTO, laptops, web cams and CCDs. I found objects mostly by star hopping with a good star atlas and a flashlight with red cellophane taped to the lens. When things got confusing with my right angle finder, as a last resort, I could always lay on my back and sight over the primary to the front edge of the tube. Once in a while I would give the setting circles a whirl, with mixed results.

Something wonderful happened on a trip to eastern Washington with my Dad. After working 17 years for Boeing as an engineer he got laid off in ’72. When they called him back he said “no thank you”. He went into real estate, and shortly before I got my telescope he started selling recreational property. He would take me with him occasionally on weekends and I would get in some fishing or hunt for rattlesnakes. I also spent a lot of time with him resetting survey stakes that mysteriously vanished.

One day he said, “Lets take your telescope with us this time.” So I broke it down and carefully packed it in the cavernous hatchback of Dad’s maroon ’77 Pacer. (Upon getting my license I immediately bought a ’67 Chevelle). It was a five hour, 300mile trip to Sun Ranch, a grassy river valley framed by rolling hills covered in ponderosa pine. Talk about good smells. We worked all day setting stakes and repairing roads which were nothing more than jeep trails then went back into the town of Tonasket for dinner. When we got back to the ranch it was starting to get dark. Dad drove to the top of one of the many logging roads and stopped in the middle of a large meadow, where I set up the scope. It was dark by the time I got done trying to get the damn drive corrector to work. (I later fixed it with a framing hammer.) I closed the Pacer door and looked around the meadow. Figured I’d let my eyes adjust. It was winter but no snow had yet fallen. The air was still and the long grass was aglow with a silvery light. There was no moon. The light was coming from The Milky Way. Hmmm. Then I looked up. Oh my God! I almost lost my balance. Words don’t do it justice. It was what being in space must be like. And now for the good part… I could see M42, without the scope. I notice some thing large out of the corner of my eye and found that I was looking at M33. It appeared about the size of a full moon. There were also a handful of other Messier objects I recognized. Compiling a catalogue like Messier did, no longer seemed that difficult.

The session didn’t last long because we were both freezing our tails off. It’s funny, I don’t remember what I saw through the telescope, probably due to the fact I had looked at so many photos in “Astronomy”, what I saw was not a surprise. I still have a clear view back over twenty years ago, to when I was looking at what Messier must have seen.

In 1990 someone stole my telescope. While my wife and I slept, they dismantled it by the light of my Boa Constrictor’s cage in the living room alcove. They took the scope, and a jar of pennies. They were generous enough to leave my only two orthoscopic eyepieces that were sitting on the wood case that my father-in-law helped me to build. I wish they had taken the case. I didn’t need it any more.

Dad passed away in 1995. I held his hand through the night as I sat next to him in his hospital bed. Snow fell silently outside. His body was there but I think his soul had already left. I treasure all the good times I had with him.

Once again, Catalogues from Meade, Orion, and Celestron litter my desk. My set of Burnham’s Celestial Handbooks among others have found their way down from the attic to my bookcase. In front of these volumes sit my eyepieces where they have been all along. Just below a picture of Dad and me.

Cheers,
Rob