We’d have all of our parents’ friends over and they were all – they weren’t into it, no one else had a telescope, but they really enjoyed it. Later on, I actually organized a star party on the island I grew up on, Hornby Island (west coast of British Columbia), and organized this star party with a friend of mine who was also into astronomy. When my parents’ friends would come by, I would set up the telescope and show everybody, “here’s Saturn!” and, “here’s the Moon!” It was great – I think I always loved to share it, which was funny. It was a 4″ Newtonian telescope – not very good, it didn’t have a good mount or anything. We’d set it up in the backyard and observe every night. I think I was about 14 when I bought my first telescope. It had wonderful pictures and information about space, and I read it over and over again. I think, for me, what really affected me was I got a copy of Our Universe which was this time-life book that came out in the mid-80s and was really thick. My dad would by a copy of Sky and Telescope every month, so I always had the pictures to look through. My dad woke me up in 1981 to watch the launch of the space shuttle, but he didn’t do a lot of observing. Both my parents were quite into science fiction – we watched Star Trek whenever the repeats were on. I’m just doing it because I love it: it’s not a job, it’s a hobby I get paid to do sometimes.įraser: I actually had a really similar upbringing with you, actually. The astronomy just sort of sucked me in and I got my undergraduate degree and said, “Okay, I’m going to graduate school,” got my masters degree, got my PhD, and just kept going and landed as a professional. I was hacking it in the astronomy classes, and going a little bit crazy with all of the young Republicans in my international relations programs (no offence to Republicans out there, but at 9am I can’t deal with them in classes). No one – well, very few people – actually believe, “I can be a professional astronomer” and I wasn’t one of those people that believed I could do it, so I figured I’d get a degree in international relations and do science policy or something like that. The program was nice and all, but I was taking astronomy classes (and I’d been taking astronomy classes for forever). Pamela: I sort of wasn’t smart enough to know when to stop taking classes? I actually started out college at James Madison College at Michigan State University, which is an international relations program. It’s strange the things you remember, and by being allowed to get away with that lie, I somehow ended up becoming a professional astronomer.įraser: How did you know that you were going to become a professional astronomer? How did you make that decision? I remembered what happened because he let me lie and I didn’t get punished. I lied and said I could see Russian cosmonauts walking their dogs on the Moon, and my dad let me get away with the lie! He showed me the Moon through it, and I lied: I said I could see Russian cosmonauts (and how I knew those things existed at age five, I don’t know – I was an uber-geek at five). One of my earliest memories is going out to the backyard around age five or so, and looking through a little tiny refracting telescope that much more strongly resembled a pirate’s spyglass than any piece of astronomical instrumentation. As far back as I can remember I was getting sci-fi influences, and getting drug out of bed to see pictures coming back from the Voyager space probes. My dad was an electrical engineer who was deeply passionate about astronomy and physics, but just for various career reasons went into electrical engineering instead. Pamela Gay: I don’t think I necessarily was going to be given a choice. So before you rush off to Wal-Mart and by that $40 telescope, hear us out.įirst, Pamela, I wanted to know how you got into amateur astronomy.ĭr. Pretty heavy stuff, so we thought we’d give you guys a couple of weeks to absorb that, and talk about our favourite hobby: amateur astronomy (obviously) and how to get into it. Fraser Cain: Last week we discussed the beginning of everything: the big bang.
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