I finally own a telescope.

It was a day to splurge, and I am now the proud owner of a telescope (of sorts). I have been obsessed with trying to determine what type of telescope I should buy. Each research session led me in a different direction, with different goals and a price that kept increasing.  Normally when this happens, it just ends up being a few weeks of research and obsession before I realize I don't have the time or resources to act on my impulses but this day was different. The dilemma I faced dealt with a question, do I want to take photos of the sky, or do I want to use my eyeballs to look. It turns out, those are not easily done with the same piece of equipment.

I often end up in a situation where my inexperience won't allow me to pick a path forward and at some point in my life I realized that means I need to simplify the goal. This resets my expectations of going all in to just dipping my toe into the hobby and so I've settled on a Seestar S50 digital telescope which allows me to take photos and learn the sky. I can manually control it for planets, the sun or the moon but it also has a go-to function controlled from my phone. 

The feature that really locked this in for me was the scenery mode that let me photograph nature as well. At a price of around $500, This lets me combine a few things I love, photography and the night sky in a small form factor. To me, the device was a reasonable splurge that will provide me access to a hobby I should have been doing since I was young.

I set it up a few times to test outside but there is 2 feet of snow which makes learning anything more difficult. The snow relented for a few weeks while the bitter cold set in and on one night I saw a clear sky and raced to set up the scope while wearing layer upon layer of clothes and coats. Turns out I should have turned the thing on first because standing outside trying to use electronics in the dark when it's -20 with the windchill was not a great idea - and the first thing it did was force a firmware update. I had to laugh at the absurdity of standing in the cold waiting for my telescope to update but after it completed - I was able to grab a few photos of the moon and learn a few of the features.

I really wonder what took me so long to buy a telescope. Most likely, it was just a matter of timing. Stresses in life come and go and with each, an activity can be found to counteract that stressor. If I spend all day talking and thinking, then a hobby involving some alone time and my imagination could be just the thing I need to offset the grind.