I have been interested in astronomy from the late 1960s through today. My neighbor from across the street in Norfolk, VA, had a 4.25-inch refracting telescope and invited the neighborhood kids over to look through it. I vividly remember seeing the 1970 total solar eclipse. Back then, people kept chickens in the neighborhood, and I remember hearing the rooster crow as totality hit. Later, I got a small Tasco telescope and thought I had found Comet Kohoutek, but it turned out to be the planet Venus instead.

A few years passed, and after my neighbor passed away, I purchased that original telescope from his estate. Over the years, I have owned several telescopes, including an 8-inch Celestron and a 13.1-inch Dobsonian. In 2017, I purchased a Celestron 8-inch EdgeHD, which I still own today. One of my primary interests in the hobby is introducing others to astronomy.

I have seen major changes in astronomy over the years. In 2024, I met a new friend who came to our star party at my church’s Harvest Festival. He asked what kind of telescope he should buy, and I gave him some advice. A few months went by, and he told me about the ZWO Seestar S50. He explained that it was a smart telescope—you simply set it up, and it automatically locates and images the objects you want to photograph. I thought nothing could be that easy. I looked into it, saw the price was under $400 at the time, and purchased one.

The first object I photographed was spectacular. I couldn’t believe the image was coming from a telescope sitting on my back deck; I thought it was somehow pulling images from the internet! The next night, while photographing the Hercules Cluster (M13), I started getting failure notifications. I was sitting in my recliner in the living room and had to go outside to check on the telescope, only to realize it had gotten cloudy!

Since then, I have thoroughly enjoyed doing astrophotography—something I had tried for years with my Celestron setup without success because I could never get the configuration right (and didn’t realize I needed to wear my glasses to focus!). If you have tried astronomy in the past and found it too complicated, you should give a smart telescope a try.