Your thoughts on astronomy?

I’m eagerly anticipating my son turning five years old so we can join the MOSI Astronomy club. They don’t allow kids under five to be there during lectures and telescope days.

Also, This

Pure bunkum. How can anyone believe that your destiny is controlled by where the stars and planets were when you were born?! Oh, wait…..
Never mind.

I was a huge astronomy buff as a kid. Lying on my back in the grass on a moonless night, staring into the inky void, I could begin to see the immense and relative distances of the planets and stars, and for me, that was always—and I use the word in its most correct meaning—awesome. As for astrology, I think it’s hokum, and if some young thing with beads, piercings and tats ever asks what your sign is, consider it a bad sign. ;-)

FWIW. “Google Stars” was one of the first apps I downloaded on my phone.

You need only look at my avatar and my profile to see that I am fascinated by the sky. While I don’t possess a lot of “book learning” about astronomy, I’ll never cease being drawn to the heavens. I live in the country, so I’m blessed with very little light polution to hinder my star-gazing.

Astronomy not astrology is awesome. There is nothing on Earth that can inspire me the same way that thoughts of everything else that might be out there can.

Does it make me a nerd if I asked for and got a telescope for Christmas when I was 9 or 10?

If you’re a nerd then I am too. 10th birthday.

I graduated from college with a major in astronomy and did research for five years at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA.

Standing on my deck in an area with no ambient light still gives me a thrill. I am out and looking up every clear night before bedtime. I have a clear view of the SE-SW and parts of the rest of the sky.

I have been watching Jupiter over the past month as it wends its way through the Pleiades and the Hyades.

I have a spot of nail polish on a window (and a marker on the floor for my feet) so that I can ID the exact spot yearly where the sun starts to move back towards the SW at the winter equinox on my horizon.

(Can we please eliminate “nerd” from our vocabulary?)

Aw… I love being a nerd.

^^^Which is shorthand for what? Being inquisitive, curious, focused, intellectually rigorous, interesting?

I would add chronically, unapologetically obsessive over our interests.

I’m very interested in it but I’d never take an astronomy course in school. I don’t care enough for all the math involved with plotting star orbits and all that hub bub. I just wanna learn about space. Sooo I tend to stick to Science/Discovery channel or old reruns of The Cosmos when I wanna get my astro nerd on.

My youngest son reignited my passion for astronomy. He fell in love with space when he was 3 and asked endless questions. We currently have 15 to 20 books on every aspect of space and all of them are in rough shape.

I love how infinitesimally small we are. I love thinking about just what may be going on in the universe at any given time. I love the history of how we came to know what we know about space.

Get some old-fashioned star charts, find an area with dark skies and good viewing, forget all the thinking and chitchat and look up.

I can watch the spot where the sun sets from Dec. 21 to about May 15, when trees and hills get in the way. But it gives me an idea of how the early guys paid attention to the nature world and figured some things out.

You can watch the nighrly rotation of the earth, the monthly revolution of the moon around the earth, the yearly path of the earth around the sun, and the movements of the planets according to their and the earth’s orbit, just for starters.

I am an amateur astrophotographer and a volunteer astronomer with Cosmoquest and participate on online virtual star parties on Google Plus and through the Universe Today Youtube feed . I took the photo in my avatar. I am involved in astronomy education outreach both online and in schools.

My latest photo is here See how many galaxies you can find when you zoom it in. A friend of mine found 37.

@Rarebear the link to your latest photo doesn’t work.

I’ll check, thanks. The issue is that my work blocks dropbox. I’ll do it when I get home.

Try this
dl.dropbox.com/u/45642077/NGC%20891.jpg

You might need to cut and paste.

Did it work? It’s still blocked from my location.

@Rarebear Yes, cut and paste worked. It’s beautiful.

I’m always reading magazines devoted to astronomy, and I have a small library worth of books about the science. I also give fringe theories a chance as well relating to astronomy, and I have a few books from those authors. I still have a few of my older telescopes from my childhood yet.

I love it too, some of God’s best work next to man.