February 18th marked the 50th anniversary
of Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto.
 

Leslie C. Peltier, world-famous variable star observer
and comet discoverer, died on May 10th.
 

Here I am with my C8, standing on the very spot I'd build my first observatory just four years later. I took delivery of my C8 on June 14th from Focus Scientific in Ottawa.

I had never looked through a "real" telescope before (not counting my tiny 30mm spyglass). After dark that first day, I turned the telescope on Jupiter. As I turned the knob towards focus I was dumbfounded -- Jupiter was going to show a big disk! Once I reached focus I could see cloud belts and moons! Next was Saturn, but what a disappointment -- it had no rings! Arcturus and Vega were spectacular, like tiny drops of fire in the sky.

I spent a lot of time observing the moon, planets, and stars. But what I really looked forward to was plumbing the deep sky. However this proved much more difficult. It took me three weeks to find my first Messier object (M57). A month later, I found two more Messier objects -- on the same night! After this it became increasingly easier to find objects, and deep sky observing became my major observing activity through the 1980's.
 

Voyager 1 did a fly-by of Saturn in November before heading up and out of the solar system.

JPL Image