Yep, it was telescopes that got me going into optical engineering. My father, an ophthalmologist, built a 3" reflector from Edmund Surplus parts and a cardboard tube for my older sister, who was interested in astronomy and rockets and such in the '50s. I got to look through it, too, and when I was 14, learned I could grind my own telescope mirror at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago–it came out pretty good! I even won an award for my telescope there for 'Best design idea' by making an equatorial mount out of plumbing fittings–it really wasn't very good, but I was proud of the plaque (I still have it)! Living in Chicago, the telescope was hard to use, but I still got to see a few things with difficulty. Anyway, comes college and a major in physics at the University of Wisconsin, and I found that the only thing that really interested me was optics. When looking for graduate school programs, I stumbled upon the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona and decided that was for me. Even got to grind and polish another mirror in a course called 'Optical Fabrication Methods' taught by Aden Meinel. (We called the class 'Occupational Therapy for Optical Engineers'.) I still have that mirror 50 years later, although it really needs to be installed in a proper OTA. I got my PhD under Jim Wyant and went on to work on such things as adaptive optics for space-based lasers at the Air Force Weapons Lab and even got to design, at Sandia Labs, the objective lens for the laser instrument that scanned the leading edge of the Space Shuttle wing post-Columbia accident. It was a fun career–all because my dad stuck a little round mirror in a cardboard tube for my big sister! Now retired, I'm having a blast taking astropics with equipment that wasn't even available to us as professionals.
Richard
but of course, optics and photonics are much more than that !
but share your interest. 
