Astronomy - My Favorite Subject

Stargazing is one of my favorite hobbies, and Astronomy is probably my favorite subject in school. When I grow up I am hoping I will become a NASA engineer.

I am home-schooled and my parents were very nice to buy me dozens of books on Astronomy that I completed like, "Turn left at Orion" (I loved that book). After memorizing some of the constellations, I bought a small glow in the dark stars and made the constellations on my walls and ceiling. I did not have enough stars so the smaller ones I broke in half to make the rest of the constellations. I like trying to locate them and find their shape in the night sky. On clear winter nights, I would sit in a blanket and watch the moon and planets through my telescope, often dragging my telescope to the top of our hill we live on, where there are fewer trees in the way. Some nights I will get home late at night from Church and try and verify the planets (there is usually 1 or 2 planets), then in bed, I'll grab binoculars and watch the moon and planets. Some nights I will stay up hours and wait until a lunar eclipse.

One of my other favorite hobbies is HTML (a language for creating websites), with that I made my own website all on astronomy. There are links from my website to www.nasa.gov which I go to just about every day to see the news. New Horizons will take the first-ever pictures of Pluto, and I am super excited to see what it's going to find like the colors. I went to the Boston Museum of Science and watched a video about New Horizons in a dome theater. We watched a video about the NASA engineers and New Horizons was in it.

If I get the telescope it will help me see more of the moons of Jupiter, which is my favorite thing to look at when stargazing. It will help me to learn more about space and become a better astronomer.