Peter Grego - an astrobiographical sketch
This is just about the closest I've ever been to the Moon - standing next to this tiny fragment on display in London's Natural History Museum - is this little piece of Luna really the best that NASA could contribute to the UK's finest public rock colection?
Beginnings
I was just 3.5 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped on to the lunar surface. Yet I can still remember those ghostly monochrome images of humanity's first contact with another world.
I can trace my interest in astronomy to Christmas 1975 when my class teacher gave me a small illustrated book about constellations as a present. The other children received books on various other subjects and hobbies, but I will be forever thankful to Mrs Dutton for her gift - otherwise I may have become a collector of lepidoptera or (even worse) a keen knitter. Anyhow, that winter I spent the clear evenings identifying some of the various constellations mentioned in the book - it really was an absolute thrill to spot Orion the Hunter, Taurus the Bull and Lepus the Hare! Before long I wanted to see more of the heavens than my naked eye alone could discern. I spent my 1976 summer holiday savings on a small hand-held telescope. What a joy it was to be able to see the Moon's craters!
Around this time a friend
allowed me to use his father's binoculars to look at the Moon -
and
what a superb sight it was. I imagined I had discovered an alien
lunar base, but when I learned about the Moon in later years, my ET
base turned out to be the diamond shaped Palus Somni (Marsh of Sleep).
With the same friend we observed a brilliant fireball streak directly down towards the northern horizon from the zenith - we ran down the street hysterically screaming, thinking we had seen a UFO! The neighbours thought we were crazy! The next day Stephen consulted a book and assured me beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was not a UFO we had seen, but that we had actually glimpsed a comet because it looked just like a 1910 photograph of Halley's Comet - I thoroughly agreed with his scientific analysis.
Solar folly
In 1976 I made a solar filter out of the tinted lenses of several pairs of cheap plastic sunglasses and subsequently burned the centre of the retina of my right eye when I tried to view the Sun through my telescope one sunny afternoon. To this day my eyesight is impaired at the centre of my right field of view. The moral of this tale is obvious - the Sun is a dangerous object. Looking at the Sun without the proper precautions will do to your sensitive retina what a pint of concentrated bleach will do to your stomach lining.
Right: My first astronomical observation - the Orion Nebula, 24 November 1980
On 24 November 1980 I swung my 40 mm table-top refractor onto the Orion Nebula and discerned the wispy nebulosity and the small cluster of stars within it known as the Trapezium. The following month in the wee small hours of 27 December 1980 I "independently" discovered Jupiter, the Galilean satellites and the ringed planet Saturn. I soon got into the habit of making observational drawings and have kept an astronomical observing log since the early days. I am currently approaching my 1000th logged observation.
Lunar observing
I began drawing the Moon's features on 15 May 1983 when I sketched the crater Cleomedes. It took a while to get into lunar observing, but gradually it became easier to be able to translate the view through the eyepiece to a sensible arrangement of graphite on paper. Since then I have spent hundreds of hours flying over the glorious lunar surface.
Society for Popular Astronomy
In July 1984 I took on the role of Lunar Section Director of Britain's Society for Popular Astronomy (then called the Junior Astronomical Society). I enjoy this tremendously, being able to help people get to know their way about the Moon and to observe it with a purpose. I produce the Lunar Section's journal Luna (which has been published since 1975), the joint Lunar/Planetary booklet Moon and Planets - A Grand Tour. I have recently taken over as Editor of the SPA News Circulars and Popular Astronomy, the quarterly magazine of the SPA.
Why not pay the Society for Popular Astronomy a visit?
Here are some of my more unusual and amusing astronomical experiences...
1. Observing Halley's Comet
from 10,000 metres over the Irish Sea on a BA1-11 jet in December
1985 - and then trying (in vain) to tell the rest of the incredulous
passengers on this Halley's Special flight where to look for the
so-called "crummy fuzzball"!
Nice plane.....shame about the comet!
2. Being questioned by police on the Clent Hills one night after they mistook my large 11 x 80 binoculars for a large bottle of alcoholic beverage - apparently they had been spying on us for some time, thinking that we were swigging from the "bottle" when all the time we had been pointing our binoculars skyward! They actually found their mistake quite funny.
3. Showing the patients on a psychiatric secure "lockup" ward the planet Jupiter using my telescope pointed out between the bars (in case you're wondering - no, I was actually a psychiatric nurse!)
4. Being the only person to have observed fading and flickering effects of ZC3177 as it underwent a grazing lunar occultation in August 1989 during the total lunar eclipse. I think I discovered a hitherto unsuspected multiple star.
5. Mistaking a large flowering bush for a ghostly/alien apparition during an observing session in 1986. "I am a human," I said, "and I come in the spirit of peace."
6. Being told my telescope was an "awful Japanese contraption" - by Patrick Moore. But I didn't take his advice to throw it away.
Patrick Moore with me in 1985 before the Halley's Comet flight - note the pronounced gravitational lensing
Have 'scope - will travel. Here with my 60 mm "awful contraption" during a summer cycling tour of Norfolk in 1988.
7. Observing a transient lunar phenomenon (TLP) within Herodotus in May 1985 (see my article in Fortean Times on the Anthology page).
8. Spooky coincidence. An elderly local man once told me that the guy who used to live at my old address in the 1930s used to be an amateur astronomer and - ulp - he used to display his telescope in the bedroom window, just as I did!
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9. I was delighted to discover that I have the same birthday (December 6) as my favourite film comedian - Will Hay, the 1930's 'schoolmaster' of stage and screen fame who happened to be an amateur astronomer. Hay discovered a large white spot on Saturn in 1933. I've always been a great fan of Will Hay, and I have most of his films on video. My favourite Hay film is Windbag the Sailor.
Click
to go to Trev Buckingham's great Will Hay tribute website |
10. Oh, and finally, yes - I've had my fair share of amusing questions aimed at me from inquisitive members of the public on seeing my telescope. "How far can you see with that thing?" is a common one. One man asked me if I could see the next day's weather through my telescope.
