A few months ago, my little girl started to take interest in anything related to Astronomy. I, with much eagerness and happiness, supported this interest. I have been trying to recall how this interest began but it was not really that important for me to know. However, knowing that my child really has the habit of copying me, I decided to jump and join and bandwagon.
At first, we were able to borrow a pair of powerful binoculars from her Uncle. When the night is good and the skies are clear, we used the binoculars to take a peek at the moon. This made my little Yza all the more eager to see more.
On her graduation, she requested for a "rocket toy". I tried browsing all the online shops I know just to look for a rocket toy suitable for her age and also my budget. Unfortunately, most toys I found were LEGO toys. I'm not saying that LEGO toys aren't good but these toys are not suitable for my daughter's age plus these toys are too expensive. However, in the same month, we had planned to go to a theme park in Manila. Knowing Manila, this city houses a lot of big shopping malls so we opted to look for the toy in SM Mall of Asia. Again, we were unfortunate because we couldn't find the best toy, not even a small rocket toy in such a huge mall! As a result, we tried to divert Yza's attention to a Star Wars spaceship that was on sale that time. In the end, we bought the one-thousand peso worth toy as our graduation gift to her.
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| Yza's graduation day with a rocket toy that her my sister bought for her |
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| We even bought her a book that features everything about Space |
After a few days, Yza, seeing that I was again browsing online shops, asked me to buy her a telescope. She was even very specific enough to request for a silver-colored one. There were a lot of telescopes online and most of them were not too expensive but also not too cheap. But since I was an extra supportive mom, I tried to look for a beginner's telescope. I researched for popular telescope brands that are available in the Philippines. I even joined an astronomy forum on Facebook just to get information as to what and where telescope are bought locally. In the forum, most members talked about a certain hobby shop located in Manila (SM MOA) called Cutting Edge. The shop sells different kinds of goods like swiss knives, GOT merchandise, and even star wars items! It was literally a piece of heaven for all nerds and fans of all kinds of stuff. Again, I went to Manila just to do two things. First, to scout for a telescope and hopefully buy one; and second, to watch The Script's concert.
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| Celestron telescopes |
Due to the high cost of the telescopes, I wasn't able to buy one. So I went home, emptyhanded.
It stressed me so much that I couldn't buy the telescope my daughter was asking that I continued to search for telescopes online. I even tried checking online shops from the other countries but because the shipping was too much for me to afford, I patiently checked on shop after another on the internet. Alas, Lazada had their birthday sale. I finally found one shop that sells a good enough telescope for a very affordable price. In a heartbeat, I ordered for it. The telescope is a refractive scope with a 70mm aperture and a 300mm tube length. The box came after a few days with some other accessories like extra eyepieces and Barlow lenses. Sorry for the jargon.
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F300/70mm Optical Telescope 150x Professional Astronomical Refracting Telescope HD Astronomical Jumelles Zoom Scope
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On the same day that we received the telescope, my sister brought home her "Moon Lamp" that she also ordered online. (Yes, we love to do online shopping)
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| Moon Lamp |
Today, we're still trying to master how to use and view things on a telescope. It's refractive so it is kind of tricky to use. Plus, I never really learned how to read star maps/charts before so we just focus on looking at the moon as clearly as possible. I can't say that the telescope is good nor bad because I haven't done a lot of studying related to Astronomy lately. To my frustration though, I started taking photos of the night sky again.
Here are some of the photos I took.
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| Chasing lightning |
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| Taken during a total blackout using my smartphone |
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| Taken using a Nikon D3200 and a Sigma zoom lens |
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