I really think my father contributed a great deal to my one-time obsession, but not directly. My dad loved to travel, and we travelled all over the place. Some places were more interesting than others, and it seemed to be the air and space museums that held my interest the most.
We went to places like the Alamogordo Air and Space Museum, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., and all sorts of other different museums, some large, some not so large. The one place that fascinated me was the Mcdonald Observatory near the Big Bend in southwest Texas. The first time we went I was too small to really enjoy it, but the second time we went...
It was just after comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter. We had returned to the Mcdonald Observatory for another visit. This time daddy decided to come back for the star party that they were holding that night.
I'd never been to a star party, and I had a vision of what one would involve. Visions of black, star-flecked streamers ran through my head, along with various other black and white things like chocolate cake, star-shaped napkins, and all other sorts of interesting things. It was only when daddy told us all to grab a flashlight that I began to suspect something wasn't quite right with my thinking.
Soon after we arrived at the star party, all of my illusions vanished. But I was not disappointed. There were all kinds of people there, and half a dozen of them had brought their own telescopes. The Mcdonald Observatory had its own large (I thought at the time) telescope, and it was through this instrument that I was to behold my first deep sky treasure.
We all stood in line, waiting for a glimpse at the eyepiece. We were about halfway through the line when somebody announced that they were going to change the object under view. I was livid! I wanted to see what everybody else saw: Saturn. The new object was centered in the telescope, and eventually it was my turn at the eyepiece.
I climbed a few steps up to the little circular piece of glass, and put my eye up to it. There, in the middle of the eyepiece was a star field with a curious object right in the middle of it. There, nearly perfectly centered, was a small, doughnut-shaped item. Nothing I had ever seen in museums or on TV through sci-fi prepared me for that moment. I had never expected anything so unusual to exist in the universe to be so beautiful! I asked the person running the telescope what it was. M57 was the answer. Absolutely delighted, I started to go around to the other telescopes that were set up.
Outside the little building that housed the visitor center telescope where a couple of guys who had set up their own scopes. They weren't nearly as big, but they were big enough to fascinate me! One had Saturn in its view. As I looked through it, I was imagining myself one day in the future, standing in front of my own telescope, doing the same thing. Eventually that dream came true.