Energize Your Astronomy
By Bill Pellerin
Houston Astronomical Society
GuideStar editor
Do you find yourself setting up your telescope and then asking yourself, “What am I going to look at?” Or, have you missed a clear dark night because you can’t think of anything that you want to observe. I hope, in this article, to convince you that by focusing on one or more areas of astronomy and delving deep into those areas that your astronomy ‘career’ will take off. What’s more, if you do that, you will never run out of things to observe.
Perhaps it’s time to change how you approach your observing. If you’ve been something of an ‘astronomical tourist’ (someone who looks at objects, says, “how nice”, and moves on) and it’s time to pick your area of interest and do a deep dig into that subject. It has been my observation (pun intended) that those who are most enthusiastic about their observing program are those who really, really understand what they’re looking at and why it’s interesting. These are the same observers who have taken the time necessary to learn about the objects and who understand the object’s place in the cosmos.