Today, 3/14, is Pi Day! I figured what better way to celebrate than to geek out on here about space.
Growing up I was not one to be captivated by what was beyond this beautiful planet. It simply didn’t interest me. Sure, I watched every single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but to me that show really had little to do with space and everything to do with relationships.
Things started to change for me after I saw my first shooting star – in my 30s! After that space was interesting enough to me to no longer avoid space-related activities.
The event that triggered my transformation to space lover was a camping trip with a group of friends. There was a program put on by the amateur astronomy association that taught us about the constellations and planets that were visible that night, and then we got to look at them through the members’ telescopes. The only thing I really wanted to see was Saturn.
Mike Durkin’s picture on Flickr is exactly what I expected to see.
What I actually saw was captured by binnysharma on Flickr.
It looked like a graphic from Space Invaders! That is exactly what I tweeted afterwards and suddenly @LunarAnticsProf – a really cool comic and blog with the best “about me” page I have ever read – was following me! I was officially hooked on space.
Then came the eclipse, and then I watched the landing of the Mars Rover, which of course led me to following the Mission Commander (aka NASA Mohawk guy, aka Bobak Ferdowski) on Twitter.
Yes, I have truly embraced that aspect of my geekiness.
What has been your favorite space-related experience? or Am I right in thinking that what I saw through the telescope looked fake? (I was sure I was on Candid Camera!) or Are you following me on Twitter at @TammyLuck?
Grown Up, Now What? 
My very favorite class in college – my very favorite by far – was my astronomy class. I graduated from Boise State University (Idaho) and we took field trips out into the high desert plains that surrounded that rather small town and our professor set up telescopes and I’ll never forget seeing Saturn and it’s rings – the Milky Way glittered across the night sky and loving that I could look out my window at night after that class and point out Orion in the autumn sky.
It’s so fascinating and so mystical and such a reminder of what a big beautiful magical universe we inhabit. I TOTALLY get your geekiness in this! It’s not geeky – it’s brilliance!
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Strangely enough, watching the movie “Back to School” with Rodney Dangerfield scared me away from taking astronomy in college. In the movie, the subject was hard and involved a lot of math (I just lost 100% of my geek cred for that statement!). I wanted to get out of the tougher-for-me subjects with As, so I took the easiest science classes (rocks for jocks!) and a math class that I could have passed my sophomore year of high school, but it counted.
Now I would be more into the learning, but then the GPA was the holy grail.
Thank goodness I’m not 20 any more!
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We embrace our geek over here. So much so that my Hub often makes sure I remember that the appropriate word to describe him is geek and not nerd or dork. Sigh. Gotta love it. 🙂
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I was a speech geek in high school. I’ve now progressed to various other versions of geekiness.
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First things first: I love Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was my favorite show back in the day. Still great today too.
Ok, now that I’m past that I can talk about space. If you want to know more about space, than watch Cosmos or the history channel’s The Universe. So awesome for info on space.
I got to see space up close in the Sahara desert. When I was in Morocco, I took a camel trek out there. The night sky was so clear, that I got to see a lot of stars I normally wouldn’t get to. it was amazing. I just laid down on the sand and looked up until I was sure I saw every star. It was a great moment for me. You could say I was geeking out pretty bad at the time.
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I loved Cosmos! I’ll have to find The Universe on the History Channel. Thanks for the recommendation.
What an incredible experience you had seeing the stars in the middle of the Sahara! Hopefully none of the desert biting/stinging critters joined you for the geek fest! I would have completely geeked out there, too!
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