I opened my bank account when I was 9 in hopes of saving up enough money to buy myself a telescope. After a year or so, the goal was too far away for it to matter anymore, and I spent what money I'd earned on whatever it is that little girls with money decide to buy. My Scene dolls were big then, before they were sued by Barbie. I think I may have bought one of them. I still kept reading up on astronomy wherever I could, but there was always a disconnect between what I read in the books and what I could see or experience, as is to be expected when you're studying the reasonably large part of the universe that isn't you. As the years passed and my pursuit of astronomy led me down more and more theoretical path, the cosmos became a nice escape. My textbooks were like the ultimate fantasy books: all the excitement and drama with all the safety of knowing that it could never effect you in your day to day life.
A few months ago, I had gotten back from a late night run and my dad was sitting on the front porch enjoying what was left of summer. When I first got seriously interested in astronomy, he was always my go-to guy. It's one thing to be scientifically literate, but it's another to be able to communicate somewhat complicated concepts to a twelve year old. It was sort of a shock to me when I came home with a new piece of physics he was unfamiliar with. Of course, the disconnect probably owed itself to the fact that I lean towards theoretical science while he himself is a decidedly experimental scientist. As we were sitting on the porch talking, it was hard not to notice a particularly bright star blinking red. It turned out to be Antares, as we discovered on the starwalk app. There was a little blurb describing Antares as the 16th brightest star in the night sky, which is pretty surprising if you've seen how bright Antares is.
I found Capella on the app before I found it in the sky and spent the night looking forward to seeing the 4-star system. I'm sure I'd seen it a hundred times before, but seeing it rise and knowing what I was looking at was was a completely different experience. It helped reconnect me with everything I had been reading about and reminded me what was so appealing about the Cosmos in the first place- that there are very few true dividers in the universe. There's not a universal classification system that doles out levels. There's just existence, whatever that means for me in the universe. I believe I've written about perspective before, but seeing the Andromeda galaxy was simply incredible.
So, I'm once again in the market for a telescope- this time a family one, as the kids have really enjoyed their stargazing sessions. My child self is uncontrollably giddy.
