By Seventh Grade, I had pretty well decided that astronomy was the main subject of my interests, and gradually I began to
spend less and less time with insect collections, rocks, electronics and biology.
I regularly read magazines like 'Astronomy' or 'Sky and Telescope' and at the very least, I would visit the many astronomy and
space news sites on the internet to keep up to date with major discoveries. I couldn't decide whether I liked to study
planets more than stars, or galaxies or even cosmology, but
I knew quite a lot about each of these topics.
I enjoyed writing, and kept a journal of my own ideas and discoveries, but mostly I liked to collect pictures of star clusters,
planets and anything else about astronomy. My family also bought me a telescope, which was good enough to look at the moon with, and a few
bright planets or star clusters.
I really wanted to take my interest in space to the next level, and considered building my own telescope, attempting to photograph the sky to
make my own star atlas, or to figure out something interesting to do with all that astronomical data I kept finding on the Internet. Most of my ideas
seemed very exciting, but I had no real idea how to do anything with them, especially the research I wanted to do on black holes or cosmology. I was puzzled
over how real astronomers do the research that they do, and pretty frustrated that all I could do was read books and stare at pretty pictures.
Age......12
Grade..7
