Outer Space

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer. My dad got me a telescope for my ninth birthday, and I looked through it every night at the moon. I had a big map of the moon and tried to memorize where all the various seas were. I was constantly amazed at the fact that I would have to continually adjust the telescope to follow the moon through the night sky.

I also subscribed to the 3-2-1 Contact magazine and had a huge NASA poster above my bed. My dad took me to the planetarium frequently, and I dreamt of going to space camp and working on the next space shuttle launch. I was obsessed with all the different constellations, and even without the aid of my telescope I would try to find as many recognizable stars in the night sky as I could.

Then, of course, I realized how much math went into astronomy, and the dream faded away (those of you who have ever seen me try to do math in my head know what I'm talking about).

But I've never stopped following the stories about the different space shuttles and keeping up on what NASA is up to these days. So when I read about the fact that the Cassini probe detected geysers of potential liquid water on one of Saturn's moons, I felt a stab of regret that I couldn't
become that astronomer. Maybe I would have been in the office that received those first pictures. Maybe I would have been in the meeting where they realized this may be a key to finding out about possible extraterrestrial life. Wouldn't that have been cool?