Astronomy has always been close to my heart, ever since I was a child. This is due to my mother’s love for science of any kind. When I was little, she would buy me encyclopedias about space and the planets, and I would constantly ask her questions. At night before going to bed, she often talked to me about mind-expanding and curious topics such as aliens, distant galaxies, light years, black holes, laws of physics, etc. After a while, I became a student and my mother helped me study mathematics, and then chemistry and physics. She is a person of the exact sciences, and I think I owe my passion for them to her. I fell in love with mathematics, and even wanted to study chemistry and physics at university for a period of time. Together with my mother, we continue to watch movies and series about space, we discuss various articles and books we read about astronomy, and for 2 weeks now we have not stopped discussing the mission of NASA and SpaceX, as if we had watched the royal wedding of Kate and William.

For mom’s next birthday, we decided to give her a telescope. She never had one. We bought a budget-friendly amateur Celestron 50AZ PowerSeeker telescope. It is a refracting telescope, meaning it uses a combination of lenses (rather than mirrors like reflecting telescopes) to refract light. This model is also very light and when I bought it I imagined how we would take it with us to tents (when camping) or to our villa in Varna. Also, the telescope has a convenient stand attached to it, which saves us one more thing to carry. It looks cool, and it wasn’t expensive – BGN 140.

My mom and I both have no idea how to handle a telescope. I was tasked to research videos on the internet and to read on the subject to begin using the telescope and taking this hobby of ours and this star love of ours to the next level. I’m still getting into the field and for starters (I’m not super sure) I’ve figured out that I need to sync what’s seen in the viewfinder with what’s seen in the eyepiece. We’ll see how far I get and if I even get to see any celestial bodies. I’ll be chronicling my misadventures in these telescopic logs.

The star adventure begins… 🪐