Why YOU love this hobby.

[Space Oddity6]

Hey all,

So I decided to come up for air and take a little break from my dissertation and have a gander at SGL. As the Great British summer is irritatingly living up to its reputation as being dismal, I've been kept from the stars for a few weeks now and as the saying goes, 'absence makes the heart grow fonder', so I've got to thinking why I love this hobby so much.

I'm naturally quite a cynical person so peering back hundreds of thousands of years into the cosmos is quite a humbling experience so instead of constantly thinking 'why?', astronomy with all its possibilities and unknowns makes me think, 'why not?' I love how astronomy keeps me grounded but filled with wonder at the same time.

I also love how supportive people are on this website. I've been on other non-astronomy related forums where people are just consistently prone to putting each other down. I can come on here with my terrible attempts at lunar imaging or ask questions that may be so ridiculously stupid (I'm not particularly scientifically-minded) and not get sneered at. Instead other users will offer advice and tips to improve or answer questions seriously.

In short I love how, I believe, this hobby makes me a better person.

What about you guys? It can be as simple as that it just gets you out of the house or something really deep and life-affirming, whatever.

Why do you love astronomy?

[whirlpool5194]

What isn't there to love about a crystal clear clear sky? It keeps me out of the way of the missus is another bonus lol

Wp

[virtualpilot45]

I only do this whole hobby for the delightful noise when you take an EP out of a barlow (POP). That and I find it a challenge to locate and observe objects that are many many times bigger and further away than anything I could comprehend.

[old glyn]

Well, it seems an arcane subject (which many will find to be challenge enough). No resident of the UK can sensibly make plans for stargazing, our weather ensures that! It can be a solitary pursuit or a sociable one - whichever you choose. Above all there's the WOW factor.

[Beulah]

Some people are terrified of looking up into the sky - especially a clear star filled sky (I know quite a lot of people who are Ouranophobic). Probably the enormity of the universe terrifies them.

I'm completely the opposite.

[whirlpool5194]

I'd agree with the WOW factor. People as me at work ask how can I sit outside for 4 hours!! Easy!! There's so much to see.....

Wp

[steelfixer]

For me its the total lack of rush.

I spend all day in a constant state of mania trying to complete peoples orders in an impossible time frame because everybody needs everything made yesterday.

So to get home after 14 hours of complete madness and to just sit in near silence looking at the marvels above us is complete heaven.

[RikM]

For me its the total lack of rush.

I spend all day in a constant state of mania trying to complete peoples orders in an impossible time frame because everybody needs everything made yesterday.

So to get home after 14 hours of complete madness and to just sit in near silence looking at the marvels above us is complete heaven.

Substitute 'solve peoples problems' for 'complete peoples orders', and I could have written that.

[Multi-Coated]

Since a young child , like many others, just looked up and wondered what is out there.I find it very comforting to know that the Universe is enormous beyond basic comprehension of which we can see a very small part. Astrophysics and associated Sciences can be studied at your own pace with a mind numbing multitude of subject matters , if you get bored with one part or totally lost ,move on and enjoy.

The best part is that it brings me closer to my Sons and my Dad when we observe or discuss together. We are not particularly over intelligent academic people but this hobby allows for all.

Thats why i love astronomy.

[whooshbang]

Frankly, there isn't much about this hobby that doesn't fascinate. Right from the workings of the human eye to farthest visible objects in the universe.

The feeling i get from reading books/articles/forums about any subject space related is enough to make me think "damn this is incredibly interesting stuff" not to mention trying to comprehend it all and the feeling of satisfaction when something clicks for the first time or an object you have only ever heard of suddenly appears in your field of view - be it through optics or not..

When i first got into stargazing all my mates thought i was a bit weird, i used to say "just trying to get a perspective of where and why i am guys"

They'd usually reply with "you wanna take your head outta the clouds dude, you'll see what's really going"

So i'd tell em "you wanna look up once in a while lads, then YOU will see what's really going on"

Astronomy is such a vast hobby and branches off into single subjects that alone can take a lifetime to learn... it's sooo big it's hard to put ones love of it into words!

[F15Rules]

The night sky puts things into perspective. The scale of the universe is unimaginable, the questions unanswerable (although humans stupidly think they have all the answers), and the daily grind seems unimportant (which it is) when you're looking up there.

If only the clouds would clear more often here in the UK!

[Bazzaar]

Because most of modern life is sh.. er rubbish, and you just need to get away from it for a while and commune with the universe.

[smudgeball]

Personally, I love it when I line up on something like M13 and although only faint I like to think there is someone in the middle of that lining up their 6SE on the Milky Way.

I then like to think that the Milky Way is just a faint smudge to them and they have the same discussion on their equivalent SGL !

[mag10]

In many other hobbies, they say "the sky's the limit".

Well astronomers have everyone else beat on that score because you can't get to the end of astronomy:

As far as we know, there is simply no end to the universe.

There's always new things to learn, more sights to see and...more stuff to buy(!)

[Stephen]

As mentioned above, there's ALWAYS something new to learn about

[nitram100]

Because there are so many answers yet to be found. I just love the wonder of it all and not knowing, it lets me creative and allows my mind to go wild.

For instance, looking at M81 I will spend ages just thinking about the possible life that exists there and is there someone or something looking back at me thinking the same.

[Slangers]

It's just the wow for me. I look into a dark sky and just lose myself in the wonder of it all and the size of it all. I am not in any way religious and for me those clear nights full of stars and fuzzies are the closest Iget to something spiritual.

[Manok101]

I enjoy the fact that, no matter what happens to me down here, I will always have those stars, or planets or what not to look at. I also love the bizarre aspects of astronomy, you know things like pulsars, or active galaxies or just anything unusual under the sun.

[Skybrowser]

The hobby never ceased to blow me away. With the moon at one end of the living room and the earth at the other, someone told me on that scale, the nearest star would be in Johannesburg....(OK, apart from the sun). The fact that we can see galaxies, planets, nebulae, comets etc. in detail, photograph them and spend hours on a hobby where you go no further than your back garden is just the job for me.

[Telrad]

I'll explain why I love this hobby...It’s beautiful. If you go out on a dark moonless night, you will immediately know what I mean. The Milky Way, stretching its jagged course across the heavens, is quite a sight to behold. The constellations, particularly the winter constellations, have an elegance and familiarity to them. The Moon is also an appealing object, with its ever changing phases and frequent conjunctions with other planets in the sky. Through a small telescope, planetary disks, galaxies, nebulae and open clusters come into view, often startling in their majesty. Of course, the beauty of the universe is not limited to what is immediately visible to our eyes. Deep space objects, seen through the largest of telescopes, are candidates for some of the most beautiful things ever seen by human eyes. Who could not fail to be impressed by the wonderful Hubble photos of the Crab and Eagle nebulas, or the views of the outer planets and moons from space probes such as Voyager and Cassini? To see for yourself, each day NASA publishes it’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. Few images ever fail to impress.It’s extreme. Nothing can be taken for granted about space. Most of it is unimaginably cold, interspersed occasionally by blisteringly hot stars with coronal temperatures of millions of degrees. Almost everything is racing around at breakneck speed: barreling through space at velocities of hundreds or thousands of kilometers a second relative to us. That’s enough to cause quite an impact if we were to get in their way. All around us catastrophic convulsions are taking place, with vast explosions and unconscionably high energies. This is a Universe of supernovas, neutron stars, magnetars, pulsars and Gamma Ray Bursts – beams of high energy radiation that would eliminate all life on our planet in an instant were our Earth unfortunate enough to stray too close. Black holes exist that can compress the mass of whole stars into volumes a few kilometers wide, creating gravitational fields that nothing, not even light itself, can escape from. This is the stuff of childhood fantasies. Superpowers. Forcefields. Instantaneous death. The destruction of worlds. It is no wonder that space features so prominently in the minds of the young.

It ignites our curiosity. Astronomy confronts us with some of the biggest and most challenging problems about the nature of ourselves and the fabric of reality. As a science, it has lead the way in overturning ancient notions of how nature should behave. At one time we believed ourselves to be at the centre of the Universe, with all objects, including the Sun, revolving around the Earth. Astronomers through the ages slowly revealed a different truth. Our star and our home planet are among countless billions in a very ancient Universe. Everything we do ultimately only affects an infinitesimally small piece of real-estate in the cosmos. This discovery, while deeply humbling, is enlightening. It tells us that we will never know everything. Our quest for knowledge is unlimited. We are ants in a cathedral, and what a cathedral it is.The study of the stars and planets has pushed out the frontiers of knowledge in every direction. It’s contribution to science and mathematics cannot be underestimated. Without astronomy, the modern world as we know it would not exist. Astronomy continues to confound us and guide us right to this day. Gigantic accelerators are busy smashing sub-atomic particles into smithereens to gain greater insights into the nature of matter because objects in space do not always behave the way our current scientific models expect them to. Astronomy has revolutionised our understanding of nature and it will continue to do so.

It tells us about our past. When you look into space, at any star you care to mention, you are looking into history. You are not seeing the star as it is now, but as it was when the photons of light left its photosphere many years ago. If you can find the Andromeda Galaxy in the sky, you are getting a picture of how it looked two million years ago, long before humans ever roamed our planet. The largest telescopes can see back billions of years ago, to galaxies in their infancy, still in the process of being formed. History is about ourselves, how we got here, why things are how they are. Astronomy opens history even further by explaining the origins of our planet, our sun, our galaxy – even providing insights into our Universe and how it all started some 13 odd billion years ago. Astronomy is fascinating even when applied to our own modest human story. We have had an intense relationship with the stars and planets for thousands of years. It guided the ancient cycles of sowing and harvesting. It provided the raw material for belief systems, rituals and religions. It contributed to our language. It assisted with navigation and discovery. In living memory, we have witnessed men walking on the Moon and robot probes being flung out of the solar system – events likely to be celebrated for millennia to come. Our relationship with the stars has shaped the culture of today.It’s our future. Astronomy is important to our future, from the short term to the distant long term. Over the coming decades, private companies will take over much of the heavy lifting formerly associated with government agencies such as NASA and ESA. This will create new jobs and new wealth. Bigger telescopes and better equipment will provide insights into reality that will stretch our technological capabilities. Over the coming centuries perhaps we will explore and colonise deep space for ourselves, using technologies yet undreamt of. In the end, billions of years from now, our sun will expand, frying everything on this planet before diminishing in size itself, its fuel spent, its job done. Perhaps there is a large asteroid or comet out there in space with our name on it. Perhaps our planet will eventually turn against us, forcing us to find a new home. Perhaps we will find a way to cross the enormous gulfs separating us from other stars in our galaxy.

All of these possibilities lead us to the conclusion that the stars will feature prominently in the future of the human race. Astronomy is available to all, from the small child with his toy rocketship, to the octogenarian peering through her telescope at a crater on the Moon. Few endeavours are so wide in scope, so rich in detail, or so marvelous in implication. That's why I love it!

[Skybrowser]

well put mate!

[Goonrdolly]

It don't matter what part of astronomy fascinates you just to look up and see that sky full of light as got to give you the buzz

[ollypenrice]

Until I was in my forties I loved nature, lanscapes, mountains, oceans, storms, weather, extremes. Then by chance I discovered astronomy and nature became even grander and far more extreme than anything I had see before...

Olly

[Hemsy]

Looking out there at tons of stars, planets, nebulae etc just gives me a buzz. The variety of our universe is just amazing and so beautiful. We're truly privileged to live in a time where we can buy fancy equipment and bring all of that beauty a little bit visually closer. Shame about the weather in this part of the world, although for every disappointing cloudy night, the next clear night we get makes the feeling even more special.

[Stargazing_Cliff]

I love looking up at skies and find it facinating looking at all different type pattern stars constelations/planets/nebula's, moving objects/satelites/ufo kind relaxes me just looking up at skies and use of stellarium to check what i am looking at.

with all different type of equipment to view skies via camera's ,telescopes, binoculars.

getting better each day at remembering names of stars so on and using what ever equipment i may have.