astronomy and you

[main_sequence]

Was hoping on gathering some insight on what astronomy means to the posters here (besides that we all from time to time inhabit space.com).<br /><br />What first interested us all in astronomy?

 

[Saiph]

Imagine you're given a one of a kind device, and told you can look, but you can't touch, change, or alter it in any way. You can't put things in to see what comes out.<br /><br />You can see it run, and how it has run, and what it spits out. That's it.<br /><br />Then, they ask you how it works.<br /><br />That's what has me hooked. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#c0c0c0"><br /></font></p><p align="center"><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">--------</font></em></font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">----</font></em></font><font color="#666699">SaiphMOD@gmail.com </font><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">-------------------</font></em></font></p><p><font color="#999999"><em><font size="1">"This is my Timey Wimey Detector.  Goes "bing" when there's stuff.  It also fries eggs at 30 paces, wether you want it to or not actually.  I've learned to stay away from hens: It's not pretty when they blow" -- </font></em></font><font size="1" color="#999999">The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[yevaud]

Imagine looking out into the darkness, and seeing these lights. And saying to yourself, "this is so magnificent."<br /><br />And then trying to figure out how it all works. It'll take your entire lifetime, and even then you won't ever know everything, but you have to try. You just have to.<br /><br />Like that. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis:  </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>

 

[silylene old]

Finding and reading my father's astronomy college textbook, when I was in the 6th grade got me interested. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[the_masked_squiggy]

The idea of the scale of everything that went on outside our own little bubble got me hooked at the age of 3. I thought it was the coolest thing that the orbit of Neptune was outside the orbit of Pluto at that time and would cross back over within a couple years. Now watching more and more unfold, and discovering how much we really don't know, and how much we can do with what little we know, keeps me hooked.<br /><br />What I'm wondering is: I've been studying this for 18 years. Where's my Ph.D.?!

 

[the_masked_squiggy]

Yeah, I got a crappy Tasco refractor too! Was good for looking at moon and people across the street, that's about it. But was durn cool!

 

[5stone10]

<font color="yellow">What first interested us all in astronomy?</font><br /><br /><br />I was playing doctor on the 9th green of a local golf club at midnight with my way too green girlfriend - when looking up for a moment, I couldn't help but notice the incredibly homogeneous form of the Milky Way. <br /><br />It was beautiful !!!

 

[dragon04]

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by everything beyond our atmosphere.<br /><br />I can remember at age 5 or 6, my grandparents had a set of 1940's vintage encyclopedias. I gobbled up all I could about the stars and planets from them.<br /><br />I remember watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon in the summer of '69 as an 8 year old.<br /><br />I think when I retire (or hit the lottery), I'll go back to school and learn astrophysics. Just for the joy of learning what I love so much.<br /><br />Imagine being the first (and only) person who KNEW how and why a star burned.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>

 

[main_sequence]

I hear the 2 with the crappy telescopes! I had an old spotting scope from some extinct department store myself, was terrible for seeing much of anything but at the time I didn't know where to look anyway. Kind of freed me to look anywhere and everywhere though. The first night I set it up I noticed that I could watch the moon move through the viewing field. Thought I was doing something wrong until I realized that it was because the earth was turning and putting the moon out of view.....you can laugh now (I was at the age where school books just started to click with observable reality!) Then when I was about 19 I read A Brief History of Time by Hawking and the two experiences really clicked. Been hooked ever since...

 

[claywoman]

<font color="orange">Was hoping on gathering some insight on what astronomy means to the posters here</font><br /><br />living in the seattle area on the far side of Lake Washington and lying on a blanket in the grass watching the stars closing in on me. I wondered even then if someplace in that cold, dark space we call the universe, if there was another world with another little girl laying on a blanket looking at the stars wondering the same thing I was.<br /><br />I remember sitting outside in deck chairs watching the aurora boriallis (sp) and in total awe of the beauty of it and wondering how it could happen. Sitting in the same deck chairs during a eclipse of the moon and trying to stay awake watching the earth chasing the moon. How wonderous, how beautiful.<br /><br />However, when I was growing up, girls didn't study science or math, we studied English, secretarial skills, and the closest we came to science was biology in case we wanted to be nurses....So I stifled my questions and my yearnings until my children were born and then they came flowing out the mouths of my babe's....So I studied a little, just enough to answer their questions. However, women didn't study math or science, and by the time they did, I went back to school again, but math was not my best subject so I'm a history major, studying NA history.<br /><br />But a jigsaw puzzle caught my eye one night, it was of a nebula and it was spectacular, and the name in the corner of this puzzle was space.com....so I followed the link and wound up here, and my learning is almost insatiable...I cannot get enough....

 

[glutomoto]

One night while being tucked in, the big man told me about Orion the first hunter, and how that group of stars is there to remind us of him. Well I might have forgotten about that group of stars, except a few minutes after the lights were turned out, Orion shot a flaming red and blue arrow across the sky. I have been looking up ever since. And yes I know it wasn't really an arrow, still I occasionally wonder if he will ever take another shot.<br /><br /><img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alpha_taur1]

I was also interested in astronomy from an early age. <br /><br />I remember during the last Perseid shower lying in the open in a remote region of the Australian bush just gazing at the spectacular show around 2am. In this location, it was completely silent, and the Milky Way and Magellanic clouds were like milk that had been spilt across the firmament. It was amazing to see the difference in the sky between this location and the city where I live.<br /><br />The experience makes me think of how fragile life here on Earth is. All it takes would be a gamma ray flash, similar to what happened a few weeks ago, but in a nearby system. It could result in life being extinguished entirely from one hemisphere of the Earth.<br /><br />Or worse - if a nearby star went nova.<br /><br />Perhaps such a gamma ray flash has started already, and the radiation is gradually making its way to the Earth at the speed of light.<br /><br />Most of all it made me appreciate how small we are in the universe.

 

[glutomoto]

<img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />gradually, at the speed of light.<br /><br /><img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />chuckle chortle snort<br /><br /><img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[alpha_taur1]

OK, gradually at the speed of light might seem like an oxymoron, but not if we consider the distances involved. <br /><br />And I realise that it is extremely unlikely for such an event to happen in a nearby system.