Posted by KeighleyAstro on May 26, 2025 in Main |

‘An Astronomical childhood’ was the title of the presentation delivered at the May meeting of Keighley Astronomical society. The guest speaker was Mr Mark Hardier FRAS from the Fordingbridge Astronomy group in Dorset. Mr Hardacker is also the current deputy Editor at ‘The society for popular Astronomy’. His presentation was about a personal journey of him growing up in Keighley from the 1960’s and how his passion for astronomy became an important part of his life.

Mr Hardaker started by posting an image of a semi detached house and pointing out that’s where he used to live on Wheathead Drive off Fell lane Keighley in his early years with his mother and father. His Mother Betty was seated with friend in the audience. It was the driveway of that house where Mr Hardaker set up his first ever telescope.

His mother career was as a laboratory pathologist, and Mr Hardaker remembers to this day in the autumn of 1966 his mother pointing our ‘The Plough’ in the night sky and explaining it to him. A few months later as a Christmas present he received a Tasco 50mm zoom spotting scope. Using his scope Mr Hardaker started to log and record his observations. The very first entry he made in his logbook was 2nd January 1967.

Moving on to the 16th August 1967 his father spotted and advert in the ‘Telegraph and Argus’ Newspaper. “For sale, A three inch refractor telescope with tripod and two eye pieces”. Made by J K M Holmes, scientific instrument makers of South Shields, Northumberland. His father told him to join him in the car and they drive to Bradford. When he arrived at the address he saw a large telescope set up on the driveway of the house. He dad bought the telescope for £20, which was a lot of money back in those days. Mr Hardaker just loved it and he still has it to this day. He has observed planets, galaxies and stars using it.

He showed a photo of the record he made on the first occasion he used the ‘Holmes telescope’. He had looked at Saturn. It was 10pm when they arrived home from Bradford and long past his bedtime. But he persuaded his dad to set up the telescope and they observed Saturn late into the night.

Young Mr Hardaker continued to record his observations in his little ‘Log book’ and over the years he moved to a second logbook and a third etc.

Continuing to expand he interest in astronomy. He bought a ‘Norton Star Atlas’. However they were not easy to obtain in those days. Mr Hardaker asked the audience, “Who remembers Reeds bookshop in Keighley on Cavendish Street?” We all remembered Reeds bookshop. With his mother they entered the shop and enquired about the Norton star atlas. He was to be disappointed, as they didn’t stock it. He was however told that they could order a copy. That sounded good, but it took months for it to arrive. When it did arrive he treated it like gold dust and he still has it in his possession in excellent condition.

The logbooks he kept where a combination of notes, drawing and sketched of what he was observing. In 1968 young Mr Hardaker joined the ’British Astronomical Association’. It was thirty schillings for a year’s membership he pointed out. His mother and father signed him up to the BAA in May 1968. He received once every month a publication that was full of stuff that most people would not understand. It was full of maps of the sky and differential equations. It was through trying to understand the data that he was reading each month that he learnt how the sky worked etc.

The next book he purchased was ‘ The Atlas of the Havens’ by Becvar Antonin. It was bought for him by his parents on a long drive to Dorset where his family were going on holiday, and it was to keep him quiet whilst sitting in the back of the car on that long journey south.

Mr Hardaker also turned his hand to taking photographs of what he was observing. ‘Astrophotography’. He showed an image of the very first attempt at photographing the stars of Orion. He used a Leica 1/35mm camera.

Mr Hardaker showed a photograph he took of the planet Jupiter. For some reasons he had not recorded the time and date on the back of the photo. However using the computer software programme ‘Stellarium’ he has been able to view what the night sky would have look like in previous years and he has been able using the position of Jupiter and the surrounding stars, to identify that he took that very photograph 9.30 pm on 26th March 1968.

He also took an interest in observing the Sun, and he photographed the partial eclipse of the Sun in September 1968. Young Mr Hardaker had connected the camera to the eyepiece of the telescope by using the tube from a toilet roll covered in ‘papie mashie’ He had created his own ‘T’ connector. And it worked.

Mr Hardaker then showed an image of him undertaking solar observations using his three inch telescope and projecting the image of the Sun onto a piece of paper held near the eyepiece. He would record the position of the sunspots on the solar surface by sketching their position, shape and size on templates of the Sun provided by the BAA.

He like other armature astronomers would send the completed templates back to the BAA. They retained all these observational records, but of course Mr Hardaker explained this was long before there were satellites and space observatories that now monitor and record the Sun’s activity.

He moved on to talk about his observations of the Moon. Sir Patrick Moore CBE HonFRS FRAS was a great advocate of observing the Moon and recording your observations by sketching and drawing. Sir Patrick Moore was determined to prove that the craters on the Moon were caused by volcanic eruptions and he diligently observed the Moon and sketched what he saw.

He was of course proved to be wrong, as we know that they are impact craters. This encouraged young Mr Hardaker to sketch the Moon and identify the craters and other features. He said that was great fun.

In his early teenage years he founded the ‘British Astronomical Society’. He father was a printer and worked at Sun Street printers in Keighley. His father came home from work one day with a silkscreen printer. Mr Hardaker explained that you would type out your text using a typewriter and you had a stencil with your text on and you were then able to make multiple copies of what you had written.

He produced an Astronomical journal using the printer and he sold the copies of the journal to his school friends for six pennies a copy. He showed the only surviving copy of his journals and he only wishes he had kept them all.

Then he started to observe open clusters. He observed Jupiter in detail and would draw the bands of clouds that he observed. He observed variable stars and recorded their changes in brightness. He still enjoys watching variable starts to this day.

Mr Hardaker displayed the last entry he made in his logbooks on 7th April 1974, when he was 16 years of age. So what went wrong; why did he stop his observations and recording them. He explained. He had his ‘O’- levels to study for and his ‘A’ – levels to study for. He then went to collage, studied for a degree.

He also discovered the best-flavoured beer in the world. Which of course is ‘Timothy Taylor’s Landlord ale. And of course he met and married his wife, and the important things in life raising a family and being very successful at his job just got in the way of his hobby. He is now retired and since 2018 he has returned to observational astronomy with the Fordingbridge Astronomers near to where he now lives in Dorset.

He bought a Meade LX 200 12-inch telescope. He is back to recording his observations in his log books and he is currently on logbook 24. He has returned to astrophotography and showed and image he had taken of the Orion Nebula, together with images of galaxies and globular clusters.

So he is back with a vengeance to observing, recording, imaging. He does outreach in schools and community groups.

Mr Hardaker moved to cover why he thinks it’s important to have a plan of what you are going to look for before you go our observing and recording your observations. He pointed out that all of the top astronomy magazines each publication list different objects that are favourable for observation. There are also several pieces of computer software that you can download and enter into the device that controls your telescope.

However Mr Hardaker pointed out that he uses none of those suggestions but sticks with using three main books.

Deep Sky Wonders by Walter Scott Houston

Herschel 400 observing guide by Steven James O’ Meara

The Messier objects by Steven James O’Meara

Mr Hardaker then commenced a question and answer session before concluding his presentation with looking at the prominent objects in the current night sky using the computer programme ‘Stellarium’.

He left the stage to a loud round of applause.