Space!

My boyhood interest in astronomy and space travel must have had several roots. One would have been my brothers, who told me what they knew about the stars and planets, and who were happy to point out the bad astronomy in movies and TV, of which there's always been a lot. Then there were the books we had, some illustrated titles about stars, planets and space travel, including an amazingly beat-up copy of The Conquest of Space (1949), featuring many fine illustrations by Chesley Bonestell. Then there was the US and even the Soviet space programs. What eight-year-old has a soul so dead that he wouldn't be thrilled by true stories of flying into orbit and then to the Moon? And seeing the rockets take off and the men bouncing around the grey dust of the lunar surface on your TV?

My mother must have noticed my interest. In the second grade, I got an assignment to write a report about the planet Jupiter. I expanded it into an entire "book," Dees's Book of the Solar System. Of course, I copied almost everything from the Junior Britannica entry on the Solar System, but I suppose it was impressive for a second grader. Anyway, from about 1970 to 1974 she took me to the planetarium at San Antonio College nearly once a month (these days, it's the Scobee Planetarium, named after the commander of the last flight of Challenger). Instead of a taped presentation, those shows were narrated live — all sorts of space subjects, including annual favorites like “What Was the Star of Bethlehem?” and shows with local color, “The Sky on the Night the Alamo Fell.” It was where I learned many astronomical concepts, including the Big Bang, which was illustrated by darkening the planetarium completely and then flashing on a bright light together with a boom; and quasars, which in the 1970s were exceedingly mysterious deep-space objects; and pulsars, neutron stars and black holes, which were (and are) even weirder.

I've retained these interests into adulthood, though not as avidly. So it was with that background that I turned a corner on Sunday at the Adler Planetarium and Space Museum and saw the Atwood Sphere -- more about which tomorrow.