Looking at the night sky
Whenever there is a clear starry night sky, part of me is 12 again. It was around that age I got really interested in astronomy and later went on to use my saved allowance to buy a telescope. I am not religious, but I can’t deny there is something awe inspiring about simply looking at the night sky. It evokes a sense of being part of a vast universe, yet so insignificant. Wondering whether there is other lifeforms out there, or - to quote the movie Contact - “It would be awful waste of space” if we were truly alone.
I still have my telescope, though it rarely gets used. A good pair of regular binoculars can be just fine and I like simply to pan around the night sky and taking all the little light dots in. Planets are of course always fun to catch, especially if I can spot Jupiter’s moons.
However, it is the Andromeda galaxy that has always been special to me. More than 2 million light years away and it can give me the shivers trying to fathom how far away that is and everything else I can see in the night sky is comparatively infinitely closer. It never ceases to be mind boggling.