By John Reed

I was in K-Mart one day about a month ago shopping with my family.  We happened by the toy aisle and my two boys immediately began chorusing that they wanted to spend their allowance money.  Mom and I assented and they were soon poring over racks of action figures.

While they were looking, I studied the cards these little men came in and noticed that some of them were very unusual.  GI Joe’s are now a small vestige of what they once were.  I wonder how many remember the much larger ones that used to be sold years ago.  Those were real army men with a hundred movable joints...I digress.

I also noticed the pictures on the cards were usually more interesting than the doll itself.  The drawing's face had character: clenched teeth, furrowed brows.  The doll itself was nothing but painted plastic!

This reminded me of something I read one time about first time observers who had seen exquisite color photographs.  When they finally looked through an actual telescope at the genuine article the comment was usually "Huh."

My own experience bears this out to some extent.  If I show them the moon they are astonished and can't believe that they can actually see craters.  Saturn is also a show stopper.  I have even had one 10 year old boy claim that the planet was some kind of fake, that you really couldn't see it like that.  Nevertheless, if I show them a deep sky object they usually tell me that nothing is in the eyepiece.  I look and there's the Dumbbell centered in the field.

If I take out a book with color time exposures made by the largest telescopes in the world and show them to the neophyte, they reply "Wow!  Lets see that in the telescope".  Now they don't mean that object, but that exact view, vibrant colors and all.

What is the solution?  I would say never show someone deep sky first, make it a planet or the moon.  As much as I hate to say it; beginners just can't appreciate what they are seeing.  It takes years to learn to really see deep sky.  If they are shown a more spectacular view first they will remember it and, perhaps, move beyond the armchair with its colorful pictures to a more serious pursuit of amateur astronomy.  If not at least they will be left with a favorable impression of what amateur astronomy is all about.  Just ask my kids, the plastic action figure really is more fun than the picture!