Originally published 4 December 2001
This is the time of year when anyone who teaches or writes about astronomy is deluged with the question: What kind of telescope should I buy my kid for Christmas?
My answer is usually the same: Don’t.
It is true that a gift telescope occasionally sparks a passionate and lifelong interest in the sky. More often, the scope ends up in the closet or under the bed, unused and forgotten.
The scenario goes something like this: The kid opens the package with the shiny new scope on Christmas morning and spends the day happily assembling the instrument. That night, the telescope is lugged into the yard and, with difficulty, pointed at a star. Guess what? The star looks the same in the scope as it did to the eye.
There are lots of wonderful things to see in the heavens with a quality scope, but you have to know what to look for. The only obvious target is the moon, and a kid will get tired of that pretty quick. Planets are spectacular targets, but first you must be able to find them; to the naked eye they are indistinguishable from bright stars.
Wonderful deep-sky objects — galaxies, nebulas, star clusters — are there for the picking but, until you know your way around the sky, virtually impossible to find.
The new computer-guided scopes can make finding celestial objects easy if properly aligned. But that is putting the cart before the horse.
The first instrument to use when enjoying the sky is the unaided eye.
The best sky gift you can give your kids for Christmas is a naked-eye knowledge of the night. Get a good star guide and learn the constellations together. Learn the names of the stars and follow the motions of the stars, moon, and planets. Take the kids to a place far from city lights and enjoy together the glory of the Milky Way.
Two tools that will help:
Guy Ottewell’s Astronomical Calendar, available from www.universalworkshop.com, a yearly compendium of things to look for in the sky, with maps and drawings of notable celestial events.
Starry Night Backyard computer software, from www.space.com [No longer available-Ed.], the next best thing to the sky itself. A few clicks of the mouse will show you what’s to be seen every night, from your very own place on the globe.
Knowledgeable telescopic viewing is fun, but the best moments of sky-watching require no instrument at all, except a pair of eyes and a sense of wonder.
I think of Mars this past summer, blazing blood red near the southern horizon, brighter than at any time in more than a dozen years, outshining even Jupiter.
Or Venus and an eyelash-thin crescent moon on the morning of September 15, snuggling together in the eastern sky, the dark part of the moon more brightly lit by Earthshine than at any other time I can remember.
At the beginning of November, Venus and Mercury sailed together through the dawn, making spotting elusive Mercury as easy as pie.
On the morning of November 18, the sky was streamered with light as the Leonid meteors put on a show.
These were precious moments, in which all of the senses were alive to beauty, moments when knowledge and experience came together, eye and mind, exhilarating and inspiring.
In a poem titled “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” William Butler Yeats wrote:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet.
A telescope lets one examine single knots in the embroidery of night, and the day inevitably comes when any dedicated star-watcher wants to experience that kind of detail. But why bother with the knots before experiencing the splendor of the dark cloths themselves, cast from horizon to horizon, spangled and ever-changing?
It may be easier to spend $300 on a telescope and be done with it, but 300 minutes spent with a child under the night sky will bring the heavens down to Earth in a way no telescope can manage.
