A few decades back (when both the world and I were a bit younger) I took some astronomy courses at the University of Washington and had a chance to put in some telescope time in the small observatory on the north end of the campus. It wasn't a really good spot for an observatory because only a few blocks away was the University District business district and there was too darned much ambient light (why the major observatories are away from cities).
Nevertheless, one evening I got a chance to gazed at Jupiter. Amazing! Big disk in the telescope (refractor), and you could see the bands, the Great Red Spot, everything. Then I spotted a few other things. I called the prof's attention to them and he took a look. Then he announced to the rest of the class gathered around the telescope, "Well, the sharp-eyed Mr. Firth has just followed in Galileo's footsteps. He's spotted the four Galilean moons!" Then everyone took a turn at looking at them. Lot's of "Ooh!" and "Ahh!"
A bit later in the evening, we got a look at Saturn. It was in just the right position for great seeing. The rings were a-tilt and plainly visible.
A few weeks later, we all went back to the observatory and took a good close look at the Arend-Roland comet, which could actually be seen with the naked eye early in 1957. Looking at it through the telescope, it appeared to have two tails, one big one, and a smaller one, sort of "split off" from the other.
For an astronomy nut such as myself, there are few things more heart-pounding than to peer through a telescope at the real thing, even though photographs may give a far better view of it.
A couple of years earlier, I had taken Astronomy 101, which turned out to be a big disappointment. That particular prof apparently didn't know from Shinola about such things as the formation of stars and planetary systems. Or, for that matter, orbital mechanics. He spent the whole quarter teaching us celestial navigation: figuring the right ascension and declination of various stars. I'm quite sure if I were ever lost on my luxury yacht in the middle of the South Pacific, it would have come in handy, but I was hoping to learn a whole lot more than that!
At the time, there were a lot of preparations being made to launch artificial satellites, plus some talk of going to the moon—and possibly beyond. One of the students asked this professor what he thought of all this. The response was a brusk, "Nonsense! It's impossible! All this talk of launching artificial satellites into orbit is nothing but a criminal waste of the taxpayers' money. They'll just fall back to earth. And any talk of flying to the moon is pure science fantasy!"
I, who had read such things as Willy Ley's Rockets and Space Travel when I was in high school and was delighted to receive a copy of The Conquest of Space, also by Willy Ley and illustrated by Chesley Bonestell, as a Christmas present, concluded that there really wasn't a whole lot I could learn from this professor.
This was late in 1957. Sputnik I went into orbit on October 4th, 1957. HAH!!
The prof who taught the later class, where we spent a fair amount of time in the observatory, was a whole different breed of cat! Very knowledgeable. Very open to possibilities. And I learned a lot from him, which is what I was there for.