Amateur Astronomer

About

When I was a kid, my parents often took us camping in Northern California on some land they owned. The nearest town was a dozen miles away, the highway was about five miles away and even the main dirt road was a couple miles away. I remember looking up one summer and actually seeing the Milky Way in all it’s beauty and glory. There were only two problems: I was extremely nearsighted and when I asked my parents to show me the constellations, all they knew were the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper.

It’s now thirty years later. I had eye surgery with the result of 20/20 vision. But more importantly, I’m married with two small boys of my own. One night several months ago our family was coming home from a dinner out as the sun went down and we saw Sirius as it rose above the horizon. The only problem was, I didn’t know it was Sirius at the time. I realized that I still didn’t know any of the constellations beyond the Big Dipper myself, and that if I didn’t change that, neither would my sons. The night sky is too vast and too beautiful for me to allow my sons to grow up as ignorant of it as I was.

Since that night I’ve purchase a number of books (mostly on bargain table) and several magazines. I’ve been to the local observatory, both by myself and with the boys. I’ve even used my youngest son as an excuse to attend the local junior astronomers club. Neither of the boys are certain they want to spend much time looking at the stars, but they do like spending time with Daddy. And there’s little in the world that compares with a six-year-old exclaiming “I found it! I found Mars!” as he looks through the binoculars.

I have a several pairs of decent binoculars and I’m looking to purchase my first telescope as soon as I can afford it. I’m searching the web for astronomy resources. I’m joining the local astronomy groups and even trying my hand at a little astrophotography. This is the place I’ll be writing about it all. And I have a little bit of experience at blogging, since I’ve been running the Network Security Blog since 2003.

One last note: ‘amatuer’ is how you spell ‘amateur’ if you rely on Wikipedia to do your spell checking.