Introduction

This blog is meant to share some of my night sky observations and learn the art of blogging at the same time.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by the Moon and stars. When I was eight I really started digging into astronomy and gained quite some knowledge about our Sun, Moon, planets and things beyond our solar system.
Also, my dad bought me a small telescope that was good for gazing at the Moon. However, after some time my interest in astronomy started waning when I did not get the deeper theory behind in and more important, because my small scope was unable to show me more than the moon. By the time I as ten, my love for astronomy had faded out completely.

Thirty-five years later, as I was driving to work, I noticed a bright “star” over the southeastern horizon. I found out this was the planet Venus, and gradually I began finding out some more astronomical facts. My childhood love was rekindled. A few days later I decided to kick-re-start my resuscitated hobby by buying a small tabletop Dobson telescope, a reflector-kind telescope with a 4.5″ aperture. Now finally I got my hands on an instrument that could show me the cloud bands of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, as I quickly found out. Also, I found out there is a lot more out there beyond the solar system. These Deep Sky Objects, as they are called, look nothing like the pics from the Hubble Space Telescope of course, but they can be seen even in my small scope. These include star clusters, distant galaxies and nebulae.
The first DSO I hit on by sheer coincidence was the Pleiades. I had heard of this name but didn’t have a clue what or where they are. When i had driven my son to archery lesson in the beginning of March, i looked up to the Western sky and noticed a small group of stars. My astronomy mobile app revealed that these were the Pleiades. In my scope they turned out to be quite impressive.
Since then I have gazed at planets pretty often and “discovered” quite a few DSOs. And the quest continues.