Tim Frodsham, 9 Sept 2021
I spent my teen years under the night sky with nothing more than a star chart and a pair of binoculars. I lived in tiny farming towns at the time and did not realize how rare it is to witness such an astounding night sky. The Milky Way stretched across the heavens, and I would spend hours tracking down nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies to admire through my dad’s old field glasses. The planets were hard to observe; they have too small an apparent diameter to display much in binoculars, but I watched them anyway. Trying to glimpse the rings of Saturn or the cloud belts of Jupiter was a challenge. One summer, I managed to track down the planet Uranus and watched it move against the background field of stars over the course of several weeks. I loved pondering the stars. They are the most magnificent of God’s creations and I could sit for hours soaking in the view. My favorite objects were open and globular clusters; the best for binocular viewing with hundreds and thousands of stars gravitationally bound in an intricate dance. I tried to imagine what the night sky would look like on a planet in one of those clusters. It would never be dark with thousands upon thousands of the brightest stars gracing the heavens.
It was a different time, and a teenager tramping about the countryside in the middle of the night looking for the next best observing spot was not something anyone worried about. I had my favorite haunts, usually an open field close to home, but at times, I would wander looking for the perfect background to the night sky. Being gone most of the day and into the night did not concern my parents. Familial trust and trust in the basic goodness of society was prevalent then.
Early in my marriage, I salvaged and rebuilt an 8-inch Newtonian reflector I purchased from a co-worker who was cleaning out her ex-husbands junk. Even then, $5.00 was a good price for the mirror, diagonal, eyepieces and all the other associated hardware. The scope was housed in a cardboard tube designed to form concrete pillars for the telescope body. The mount was homemade as well, and guiding the telescope meant pointing it in the approximate direction and then star hopping to my desired target by tugging on the tube. To use a telescope this way, one had to be intimately familiar with the night sky and be able to pinpoint objects to view which were invisible to the naked eye. Once I was centered on an object, I had to pop in from time to time if others were viewing and tug the scope body just a skosh, to pull the object back into the field of view as the stars moved across the heavens. It was difficult to find objects in the sky this way, and we were able to observe only a few objects during the course of the night. Even so, my daughters loved to be out under the night sky with dad and his telescope, especially my second daughter Melissa. I was out under the stars with her one evening and explained to her how we could see man-made satellites gliding gracefully across the sky. I told her that my record for the number of satellites in one evening was seven. Remember, this was the mid 1980s, and satellites were not that common. She pondered this for a moment, quietly slipped into the house for a couple of blankets, and then plopped me down in the back yard to beat that record. We did with a count of 14. I took some time with her that evening, time to talk, time to listen, and time to admire the heavens with one of the most delightful daughters ever to grace a home. This became harder and harder to do as work, church and home became more complicated.
In February of 1986, I told six-year-old Melissa about Halley’s Comet. I explained to her how comets moved around the sun and that, although the 1910 apparition of the comet was spectacular, the one coming up in the next few days would be much less of a show. Even so, we would be able to see the most famous comet in history. I was headed out that week to drive to a remote location in the Utah desert for a pre-dawn look at the comet, and Melissa asked if she could come. Of course I said yes, but I figured that in the reality of the moment she would find her bed much more appealing than a cold pre-dawn drive to the desert with her dad. At 2:00 AM on the appointed morning, I went to my daughter’s room to wake her up. She looked at me sleepily for a moment then, without a word, slipped out of bed to find her clothes. We drove out to the desert, set up a pair of binoculars, and found the comet. We admired the comet for over an hour while she perched on the still warm hood of the car, wrapped in a blanket. Another quiet time, focused only on my incredible daughter.
Ten or so years ago, the cardboard tube had had enough of banging around in the back of our van, tugged and bumped, wacked, mauled, and otherwise loved by a gaggle of kiddos and decided to fall apart. The tube was a bit more than squashy, and the holes for the mirror mounts had become so enlarged the mirrors would flop about as the scope was moved from one target to another. I decided I had paid my dues and purchased the largest telescope I thought I could fit in my vehicle, an 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain with a computerized motor drive. There would be no more star hopping to find an object. Once the telescope was aligned, all I needed to do was type in the object I wanted to view. I admit, there were times I did not go out because the scope and mount were just too large and heavy to cart to the vehicle for an impromptu observing session, but once out under the stars, I was thankful for every square inch of that primary mirror. Unfortunately, I did not take the time to familiarize myself with the instrument, particularly how to set up and align it. I enjoyed many of my outings with the scope, but there were times we were not able to see much because setup had gone badly, and I spent most of the time badgering the scope to find the objects we were supposed to view.
Consulting a lunar phase calendar early this year, I realized that the phase of the moon would be perfect for stargazing during our annual pilgrimage to Bear Lake, Utah. At 7500-ft in altitude with dark skies and no moon, time at the lake was a perfect excuse to cram my telescope, mount, and tripod into the SUV for the long drive from Oregon. An added bonus: more than a week with the grandchildren and enough raspberry milkshakes to bloat my own waistline to rival Saturn’s rings.
What was unique about this trip was using the telescope every night. I would spend over an hour each evening setting it up and aligning the scope to the night sky before we would begin observing. An accurate alignment is crucial to a good night under the stars. Aligning the telescopes computerized motor drive means teaching it exactly where it is in relation to the night sky. Once aligned, one can simply tell the computer controls the desired object to observe, and the telescope will whir and slew away until the next wonder of the night sky is accurately centered in the eyepiece. After several hours of admiring the sky, we would disassemble the scope and cart the body, mount, tripod and all the gadgets hanging on the scope back into the cabin to await the next night. I had never done so much observing in one week and became practiced at setting up and aligning the scope. In addition to the repetition of setup and alignment, I spent time online and in the manuals for the scope learning new and better techniques for achieving a more accurate alignment. Each night, setup got faster and my alignments were more and more precise.
My grandchildren were thrilled to spend some time under the night sky. Most of the excitement was looking through the telescope, but according to their parents, a lot was due to the hours they could spend with Papa long past their usual bedtime. Braylen, in particular, was fascinated with the night sky and was out with me every evening. I taught him how to use the controls and fine align the scope to each object. I then put him in charge of the telescope and had him hop from object to object while I helped the littles at the eyepiece. He was still one of the first at the eyepiece for each new object. His mom told me later that he put a new poster up on his wall at home that reads, “I Love Space.”
Spending such a concentrated amount of time with the telescope, I not only learned to set up and align the scope with ease, I spent time thinking through and solving issues with the instrument I had been dealing with for years. Set up became a joy. Aligning and leveling the tripod was the most important step. If the foundation for the telescope is not properly leveled and pointed to true north, the rest of the assembly and alignment process is a nightmare. We would add the telescope mount, body, controller, eyepieces and finder scope one by one, discussing with the littles what each piece did and what we needed to do to make sure they were properly installed. The attention span of some of the littles is microscopic, but I did capture their imagination if just for a few moments.
What was once a chore to set up became a delightful part of star gazing. In the past, there were many nights I skipped observing simply because I did not want to tackle the frustrating assembly and alignment procedure. I learned to slow down and enjoy the process. Pouring over star charts with my children and grandchildren, we added objects to our observing schedule each night that I had never looked at before. I have used that viewing schedule many nights since.
Am I spoiling my grandchildren by introducing them to the night sky with a computerized telescope without them first learning the sky? I think not. Not everyone needs to enter the world of astronomy the way I did. Yes, it is nice to learn the constellations and pinpoint in the night sky the location of each of the wonders to observe, but I first want to encourage an interest in astronomy and observing in each of my grandchildren. Before outlining each of the constellations for them and helping them learn to move about in the night sky, I wanted to pique their interest and show them some of the wonders we can see for ourselves in the heavens. We have technology today I could not have imagined as a kid. Why not use it? The worst thing a parent can do is buy their child a department store telescope. They are notoriously difficult to use, do not produce much of an image, and are mostly an exercise in frustration. Children quickly succumb to the irritation of attempting to use such an unwieldy instrument and lose all interest in astronomy. I understood that better as I first struggled with my fancy schmancy telescope. In my case, there is a learning curve one has to endure. In the case of the department store variety, there just is not a reasonable way to get one to work consistently and reliably.
Last night, I took a family in my church congregation to a favorite observing spot at a state park in the Oregon coastal range. They had had a busy evening, and we were late arriving at the site. Normally, setup in twilight would have been an impossible task, but with my previous experience this summer, we had the scope set up and aligned as dusk settled and the night was dark enough for observing. We hopped easily from object to object, and as the night progressed, returned to some of the first objects we observed to see them higher in the sky and under darker conditions. I did not have to worry about controlling the instrument; I could talk to my friends about each object, nebula, star cluster, and galaxy without the interruption and frustration of instrumentation problems. Type in the Messier number for the object we wanted to see next, and after several seconds of whirring turning, the object was centered in the eyepiece. On that and previous evenings, I watched other amateur astronomers with their complex telescopes fail to observe even a few simple objects due to technical difficulties. They were more focused on the instrument than on the wonders of the night sky.
At this point, I am going to digress just a tad, and reminisce about Charles Messier. Charles, Monsieur Messier to the rest of us, was an astronomer in the mid 1700s. At that time, telescopes were not of good enough quality to see what we know now as galaxies, clusters, and nebulae as much more than smudges and the most interesting objects in the sky were comets. Call them the black holes of the 18th century. Charles Messier was an avid comet hunter and decided to catalog all of the fuzzy objects he kept running into that were actually stationary objects. They looked a lot like comets in his 4-inch refractor telescope, which was state of the art for the day. Few people remember Charles Messier as the “Comet Ferret” and discoverer of 13 new comets. Amateur and professional astronomers alike however know his catalog of deep sky objects as 110 of the most stunning objects of the night sky.
During one night of observing, an individual chatted with me for half an hour about the complexities of his homemade telescope, all of the computerized controls he added, and the detailed work necessary to create, by hand, each component. He spent the evening, as he usually did (based on our conversation), fighting problems with his instrument without observing even one object in the sky. By taking time to master my telescope, a hobby I have enjoyed all my life has taken on new dimensions. I am better able to share my passion with friends and family. I am tackling more difficult objects to observe and spending less time frustrated over instrumentation problems and more time admiring all that God has created. After 10 or more years of owning a very capable instrument for observing the night skies, I finally paid the price to cross over that learning curve.
During my career as an electronics engineer for a computer chip design company, I picked up a number of bad habits due to the fast paced and stressful nature of my work. My job was to solve technical problems no one had ever approached before, not just a problem here and there, but a steady stream of hurdles to overcome in the process of designing circuits for state-of-the-art microprocessor chips. I studied issues and found solutions that would work without polishing the results or gaining an appreciation of what I was doing. Jumping from one technical disaster to the next, I rarely felt I had both feet on the ground. Once a solution was deemed good enough, I was on to the next calamity. In some cases, data taken in the morning from the problems I was trying to solve were on the company president’s desk that afternoon. I loved the work I was doing, but it was rare that I could take the time to enjoy the experience.
Since retiring from the high-tech industry, I am trying to apply lessons learned behind the telescope and in earlier years with my tiny daughters to other aspects of my life: slow down, enjoy the journey, and take the time to build strong foundations, like the tripod alignment for my telescope. I am applying these lessons not just to my hobbies, but to my relationships with people as well. I have had amazing times under the stars with friends and family because I finally took the time to familiarize myself with my telescope. How much more poignant are my relationships with others when I take the time to truly get to know and understand them. I find that I am appreciating my other passions, such as gardening, more when I slow down and enjoy the process. Most important of all, I am enjoying my scripture study and contemplation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as I take the time to appreciate the richness of His written word. Lessons learned with a tiny daughter under the stars are coming full circle, and I am delighted to share similar moments with her children under the night sky.
Latter-Day Saints 