A telescope for primary school children

How did I come into astronomy?

I was interested in nature and natural sciences quite early. This is not so surprising, as I grew up virtually in the middle of nature, far away from large cities. When I was ten years old, dinosaurs and everything ancient were very "in". I can remember that once I "tortured" my fellow schoolmates with a lengthy presentation about dinosaurs. How I then ended up exactly in astronomy is lost in history. Taking into account the dark countryside night sky, this is not entierely surprising. When I was twelve years old, I baught from my pocket money my first real telescope from a catalogue firm. Its optical and mechanical quality was not very high, that's why I tinkered on it quite a lot, without much success. Soon the telescope was in a state that it didn't make much fun anymore using it, and it would not create much joy if I gave it away to somebody else.


Then last year the JENAM (Joint European National Astronomy Meeting) 2008 took place in Vienna, Austria, where I could hear about the fantastic activities that were planned for the International Year of Astronomy 2009. There I had the idea that I could buy a new telescope and donate it to a school. Nowadays, you can get a telescope of fair quality and even larger size for the same amount of money that I then paid for my first telescope. Since now I work as postdoc at the univeristy and earn a decent salary, such an investment does not put a large financial burdon on me. But to which school should I donate the telescope? What suggests itself is of course the primary school that I used to attend at the age of six to ten, in my home village of Geboltskirchen in Austria. No sooner said than done! First, I sent an e-mail to the school principal to ask whether such a gift would actually cause much joy. Her answer was very positive! So I searched on the Internet for a suitable offer and found a refractor with 80 mm aperture and 900 mm focal length to be the best one. End of October last year the handing over of the telescope (and two books for beginners in astronomy) took place in the school. Here a foto of this event:






The children were very excited about the present. As a countermanoeuvre, they made drawings of their fantasy universes and gave them to me as a present. I pinned them up in my office, so that my colleagues, too, can admire the pieces of art:







Now the telescope also has to be used to show the wonders of the starry sky to the children. As an expert in that field, this is my job. That's why we made an appointment for end of April for a stargazing evening with the children. In this blog you will get too read about how the evening went!


Stay tuned,
Stefan