Astronomy is one of my "armchair hobbies" (like so many of my interests, I dabble in it without becoming immersed in it). I've been drawn to astronomy since I was a kid, watching a solar eclipse through a pinhole or viewing Saturn and Jupiter through binoculars. I'm not very knowledgeable on topics related to astronomy but I love to watch astronomical events. I guess, to be more accurate, I would have to say that my hobby is astronomical observation.One of the most exciting observations for me was the 2003 Leonid meteor shower. I had read on the internet that this particular year might be a good one for the annual November meteor shower, so I made plans to sit in a lawn chair outside on a freezing autumn night. I went out around 1:30 in the morning and watched until near sunrise. Sitting in my backyard, with city lights around me, I counted as many as 500 meteors in one hour! This was an incredible meteor shower!
I've calendared other astronomical viewing opportunities, but many are not visible with the city lights where I live. And of course, the weather is always a variable. Many times I have set my alarm clock to wake-up and go outside to look for a particular meteor shower, lunar eclipse, or aurora, only to find thick cloud cover.
I have seen the aurora twice in my life. Once when I was hauling hay as a kid...the sky was very dark and I was shocked to see the colors in the northern sky. Being close to the 45th parallel makes such sightings rare and I had no idea what I was seeing. My father told me it was the Northern Lights. One other time, actually just a few years ago, my oldest son called me late one night and said I should go look at the night sky. And sure enough, I saw them again...fainter (because I was near city lights)...but they were amazing. I subscribe to spaceweather.com to receive notifications of potential auroras, but those alerts have never resulted in me "catching the Northern Lights".
In 1969, when the moon landing was televised, I was glued to the television...I actually took pictures of the TV screen for my scrapbook. I later traveled to an exhibition just so I could see a moon rock, behind glass. I've followed the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Discovery Mission as it orbited and photographed an asteroid. I followed the Mars Pathfinder when it landed on Mars in 1997, and then watched disappointedly as two subsequent Mars missions failed. I stayed up waiting for the news of the successful landing of the first Mars Rover. I have viewed the International Space Station orbiting the earth and reflecting sunlight just after sunset and just before sunrise on many occasions. And I was watching the launch of the Challenger space shuttle when it exploded in 1986.
My first astronomy class was at a local university where I was able to photograph the moon with a 16" reflector telescope. A few years back, my children gave me a small telescope and I've used it on several occasions...most recently last night, as I tried (unsuccessfully) to see a flash from the deliberate collision of the SMART-1 spacecraft with the moon.
I have also watched for comet and solar wind return missions. The Genesis mission failed, but the Star Dust mission succeeded. However, I did not see either of these re-entries (even though I drove several miles out of town in the middle of the night to catch a glimpse of Star Dust's re-entry).
These are just a few of my exploits as an armchair astronomer...watching the skies to see the unusual.
