Sky & Telescope - April 2021 - 84

FOCAL POINT by Martin Hajovsky

" Here, Dad, Take a Look "

I really didn't think stargazing with my son one night would bring me almost to tears.

THE SIGHT AND SOUND stopped me

dad, that my adult life would deﬁnitely
consist of exploring the night sky. Of
course, it didn't, not in a professional
sense anyway.
By the time I was 15, I'd saved
enough money to buy my ﬁrst telescope, an Edmund Scientiﬁc Astroscan
4½-inch reﬂector that I still own. A
friend of mine thought a telescope
could look like many things, but not a
little red ball with a cylinder sticking
out the side. He called it bogus and gave
it the name " Bogeyscope, " which made
both my dad and me laugh.
Boy, did I ever love touring the sky
with that Bogeyscope. The ultimate
dream, though, was a Celestron C8. Its
bright orange tube ﬁlled my dreams the
way Mustangs, Camaros, and Corvettes
ﬁlled those of my friends. To be fair, I
dreamed of those, too. When it comes
to dreams, why stop at one?
The C8's price tag was well beyond
my odd-job income. My parents ( " A
thousand dollars for a telescope?! " ) had
doubts about how well I'd take care of
it, which I admit were probably wellfounded. 

My father, however, loved looking in the Bogeyscope with me. One
time I lined up the eyepiece on Saturn,
turned, and said those same words
my own son would say to me 40 years
later. I can still remember my dad
crying out " Whoopee! " when he saw
Saturn's rings. " There they are, " he said
excitedly. " They're right there. I never
thought you'd be able to see them with
this little thing. "
My recent observing session with
my son brought me full circle to that
long-ago night. I never did get that C8,
instead " settling " on a slightly grander
CPC 925. My parents are no longer with
us, but I like to think they would have
been happy indeed to see their grandson
turn to their son and call him over with
that same irresistible invitation: " Here,
Dad, take a look. "
 MARTIN HAJOVSKY is a freelance
writer, former Houston Chronicle editor, and author of Humans in Space, a
space-focused reader for students of
ESOL (English for Speakers of Other
Languages). He lives in Houston, Texas.

LE AH TISCIONE / S&T

in my tracks. There was my 20-year-old
son, lining up my Celestron CPC 925
to ﬁnd Saturn in the eyepiece. When
he said those ﬁve simple words above,
it brought back a surprising ﬂood of
memories, both of my father and my
own journey as an amateur astronomer
(emphasis on amateur).
Growing up in Houston during the
Apollo era, I learned to love the night
sky at a very young age. Johnson Space
Center's proximity made it a regular
destination of school ﬁeld trips.
Soon after one such excursion, I
stood in our front yard and stared at
the Moon hard during the Apollo 16
mission. My dad came out to collect
me for dinner, and I told him I thought
I could almost see the astronauts
up there, walking around. He gently
pointed out that not only could I not
see them, but no telescope was powerful
enough to ﬁnd them. They were just too
small and too far away.
I remember being struck by that
sense of scale and distance, and I knew
then, sharing that moment with my

84

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