The Sidewalk Astronomer

What an amazing men this is. His name is John Dobson, he's an amateur astronomer and inventor of a revolutionary telescope model. He has made a quest to let people see what they never saw before. The jaw-dropping eyesights offered by the simplest of the telescopes, has made many people leap out of their "genetic programming" boundaries and amaze at what's out there.

I remember the first time I saw Saturn through the telescope. Besides all the jumping histerically and calling everybody that followed, there was a quiet moment when I first looked at it and I couldn't control the excitement of seeing something so amazing. And I felt new connections being created in my brain, because there is no preconception, you really never expect to see what you see when you look through that little eyepiece. That was one of the most important moments in my life. Mainly because I did it by myself, alone in the backyard, out in the freezing cold, after 2 hours of scrutining the sky. But I found it! With my 70€ piece of supermarket telescope...
And 3 or 4 years later, after seeing it duzens of times, it still amazes me every single time! About what else can I say that?

Now, when I go to the observatory and I show people Saturn and Jupiter and Mars, and even the ever-so-simple Moon, even if they don't seem as interested as I would expect, I know there's connections being created in their brains. Almost everyone has the same reaction, and that's amazement. I like that.


Here's a little clip form a movie about Dobson:



"Everything we know about this universe, has been figured out by people as stupid as we are. And if they can do it, we can do it. Not only that; but if you figure it out for yourself - it doesn't matter who figured it out before - if you figure it out for yourself, it's your own."