I have always had an interest in what lies beyond the horizon. That said, while I’ve had a lifelong fascination with astronomy, my connection to the stars has been more theoretical than practical.

I bought my first cheap refractor for visual astronomy when I was in my mid-twenties. The first time I set it up with a friend, I pointed it at the brightest object we could see in the clear nighttime mountain sky and I got my first up-close, real-live look at Saturn. It blew me away. But, as much as I wanted to, taking the time to find dark skies over the years and set up the scope just didn’t happen very often.

In February of 2024, I came across a magazine article about a new piece of astronomy tech for hobbyists; an ultra-portable, AI-powered, smart-telescope called the Dwarf 2. It made me think of the feeling I had when I saw Saturn for the first time through that first telescope. The thought of seeing, even on a small scale, images like I’d seen coming out of NASA via the Hubble Space Telescope, was too much to pass up.

I purchased the little scope, no bigger than a hardcover novel. Even though it was February in Chicago, I couldn’t wait to set it up. I went to a nearby park as soon as the sun went down, set the little scope up on a picnic bench in the middle of the open field, got out my phone (everything is displayed on and controlled from a cell phone or iPad), started the setup routine to align the scope with the sky so it knew where it was looking…and waited. It wasn’t long before the image shown to the right began to fill the little screen of my phone. Honestly, it made me start to giggle. There was the Orion Nebula. The light from which had just traveled 1350 light years across space and time to hit the tiny little sensor in my camera. This mind-bendingly immense object, more than 24 light years across, was slowly resolving on the 15 square inches of my iPhone. It was in that moment I knew…I was fucking hooked.

I started ravenously consuming You Tube videos and how-to articles by astrophotography content creators; Quiv the Lazy Geek, Lucomatico, Patriot Astro, Dark Rangers, Inc., The Narrowband Channel, View Into Space, Nebula Photos, Adam Block, and literally dozens of others. A whole new world opened up, one that required a new language, new skills, and a bunch of new stuff…

Within a month, I had researched and purchased my first few pieces of real gear. I put together my first astrophotography rig within two months and there’s been no looking back.