Originally published 23 December 1991
If Santa has telescopes in his sleigh this year, then he should toss in a few good star books too. Here’s why.
A good quality telescope costs hundreds of dollars, usually more than a parent is prepared to pay. The alternative is a cheaper scope from a toy store or merchandise mart that is likely to cause more frustration than pleasure.
A telescope costing $69.95 can magnify as much as one costing ten times more, and the salesperson will likely tell you as much. But a magnified blur is just a bigger blur. When you buy a more expensive scope you are getting quality optics — a sharp, bright image that will magnify nicely.
I’ve heard stories of kids being turned on to astronomy by a cheap telescope, but much more frequently I hear of kids going into the backyard on Christmas night, seeing nothing, and being turned off for life. The cheap telescope is put in a closet and forgotten.
An expensive scope isn’t necessarily the answer. The problem is knowing what to look for. If the moon is in the sky, that’s an easy target. But a kid standing under the stars with no knowledge of the constellations or the motions of the planets is doomed to failure.
Knowing where to look
The stars are too far away to show up as anything more than dots of light. So what is there to look at? Planets, of course, but to the untutored eye planets look just like stars, and which of those hundreds of dots in the sky are planets? Nebulas and galaxies are wonderful to look at, but again a kid needs to know where to look — and a better telescope than you’ll get for $69.95.
There is something better you can give kids for Christmas than a telescope. You can give them the night sky.
One memorable Christmas of my own childhood — I can’t remember exactly which one — my father was given a star book as a gift. The book, long out of print, was A Primer for Star-Gazers, by Henry Neely. As my father used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.
Even a glance at my father’s book takes me back almost half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our house in Tennessee, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines.
He told me stories of the constellation as he learned them. Of Orion and Scorpius. Of Cassiopeia, Andromeda, Cetus and Perseus. Of Callisto and Arcas, ensconced in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court.
He taught me star names. Sirius. Arcturus. Polaris. Betelgeuse. And other, stranger names. Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. Nunki in Sagittarius, perhaps the most ancient name in the sky, and Cor Caroli, “the heart of Charles,” one of the newest. The names were like incantations.
He taught me to recognize the patterns of constellations. The kite of Cygnus. The big and little dippers. The teapot in Sagittarius. His lessons were more than exercises in “connect the dots.” The sky was a textbook of history, science, mathematics, myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery.
First, know the stars
It wasn’t until many years later that I obtained my first telescope. By then, I knew what to look for and where to find it, and various instruments have since given me many hundreds of hours of pleasure. But to this day I would rather stand in a snowy field or a summer meadow equipped with nothing but my eyes, and leave the telescopes to others.
There are many fine books that will help children learn their way around the sky. I would recommend the books by H. A. Rey, Find the Constellations and The Stars: A New Way to See Them; they are both fun and informative. Once a child knows the stars and constellations, then it will be time to invest in a quality telescope that will give a lifetime of pleasure.
In the meantime, even without a telescope, the night sky can inspire a child to knowledge and wonder — and teach a Christmas lesson too. In this troubled, cacophonous world, the silence and infinity of the night sky still whisper the message shepherds heard thousands of years ago as they watched their flocks and stars by night: Peace on earth, good will to men.
