My Journey Into the Infinite!

Blogs are the perfect platform for sharing information with people. Keeping my goal in mind, I would like to dedicate the first blog to my story of how astronomy has been inspiring me since childhood.

My childhood, the only difference being, I never got to see such a beautiful sky.

I have always been one of those kids who question everything. At 10, I used to sit at my window gazing at the airplanes wondering about their seamless flights into the sky. It was always astonishing to see airplanes and helicopters fly across the sky. At 11, I fuelled my curiosity by reading astronomy magazines, scrapbooking interesting facts. Luckily, I also got a chance to attend two sessions on the life story of astronauts Sunita Williams and Kalpana Chawla, which inspired me to pursue my career in the field of astronomy. I was particularly inspired by Sunita Williams, the astronaut who took with her a copy of Bhagavad Gita, Ganesha idol and samosas to space. She once said "Don't get bogged down by the notion of limits. There aren't any," and I realized that's what astronomy implies.

In no time, I found myself surrounded by enthralling questions on stars, planets, galaxies, clusters, nebulae and everything else that’s far beyond our 3D perception of the world. This curiosity kept on growing and I had loads of questions rattling around in my head. At 17, I was extremely lucky to have got a chance to visit NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It was one of my best experiences where apart from learning about rockets, spacewalks, space shuttles and moon landings, I was lucky enough to have been able to see a live rocket launch. Soon, my urge to know more about planets and stars was satisfied when my parents bought me a Bresser amateur telescope. I now had the right tool to look beyond the limits of our naked eye; craters on the moon, the red bands of Jupiter, the beautiful rings of Saturn and the red planet, Mars, to name a few. My curiosity couldn’t be contained and I tried grabbing every opportunity to learn more about the stellar objects.

Saturn as seen through my telescope

I was equally fascinated with the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting the earth. Using NASA’s “Spot the Station” service, I was able to observe the ISS transit with naked eyes. I was lucky enough to have some of my questions answered about the “year in space” mission in online events like Scott Kelly’s tweet chat from space, Tumblr answer-time from space and Reddit #year in space AMA. At 18, I attended an Interview with Rakesh Sharma (The first Indian citizen to travel to space), which further inspired me. As a part of my regular astronomy sessions, I observed the Supermoon of 2016 and the planetary conjunction of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter. I was totally engulfed by the vast universe of comets, planets, stars and beyond – it was impossible to untangle myself. At 19, I attended an overnight stargazing session where I observed the Orion nebula, Pledeis, starfish and honeycomb clusters, whirlpool galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, M41, M45, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and a binary star system. This session was an ocean of knowledge for me. Apart from this, I also attended a seminar on astrophotography - “Breaking the M’s of Astrophotography,” Fast forward a few years and I am here, 21, seeking to pursue a career in Aerospace Engineering, writing this blog to share my love for astronomy and inspire you to delve deeper into my universe!

My Ticket to Mars, ensuring my name was etched onto a microchip placed aboard the Mars Insight Lander, which landed on Mars in 2018

It’s always baffling to realize that we are just a tiny spec in this ever-expanding universe. Too many mysteries lying around which keep on dragging us deeper into the subject. Imagining the vastness of our universe is intriguing and sometimes frightening. Understanding how things work in this universe requires patience, hard work and most importantly, a curious mind that’s never tired of thinking beyond the unknown. So, never stop thinking, never stop wondering, more importantly, never stop asking “why.” Stay curious and yeah, get some space!

#Stay_spacebound #StayAmazed