My Early Observations

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My Early Observations

Welcome to the page where you can read the story and see some pictures about my early observations of the celestial objects!

My First Celestial Object: the Moon
As I mention it on the Who Am I? page, my first regular observation of a celestial object (the Moon) started on a clear and hot summer night. On July 31, 1979 I made my very first "real" observation and sketch of the first quarter Moon while viewing it through my primitive 40mm refractor (finally I post this sketch and my other lunar drawings below; they were buried under a pile of books back in Turkey). I call my refractor as "primitive", because it looked liked anything else than a real telescope! It consisted of a cardboard tube with a long wooden stick attached in front of it. The 40mm non-achromatic simple objective lens was housed in a rectangular carton box which was gliding on the wooden stick to focus the telescope. I continued observing the Moon and charting its surface features, mounts, crater rims and mare. This continued until I got a detailed lunar map from National Geographic Society. Then I moved on to the planets.

My very first lunar drawing (top right) and the ones that followed soon after.

My Planet Observations
Upcoming soon!

My Sunspot Observations
Please visit My Sunspot Observations page to see my sunspot drawings I have made since the first days of my astronomical observing.

Some Pictures of My Observing Notebooks
Here I post a couple of pages from my old notebooks where I jotted down my astronomical observation results and drawings. Please note that from early days on, I kept my notes in English (the first ones were in French). You may also notice a similarity in my drawings to those of Galileo's. This is not a coincidence, since I was very influenced by the format and layout of his observing notebooks.

Two pages from one of my earliest observation notebooks. The above observations date from June/July 1982 and include my drawings and accounts of several planets and sunspots.

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