The Universe through telescope

When I was a small kid, I always wanted to reach the stars. I wanted to discover habitat
planets lifeforms beyond my imagination, I wanted to find out what is like to be on the edge of the
Universe. Also the sight of the stars makes me dream and I like dreaming. Sometimes I can spend
hours just watching the sky at night, if I have time. But I’ve never had the chance to watch them
closer, because I don’t have a telescope.

Fortunately, on the 9th October, our English teacher, Vorzsák Milán, organized a
skywatching meeting and I was very excited to hear about that. The meeting was at 9 pm in the
Gheorgheni district. He took out his telescope, which is really big and I think it’s a telescope with
reflector design.

First, we watched the Mars, which was glowing in orange in the telescope. The next one it
was the Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, which is the closest galaxy to our Milky
Way, aproximately 2,5 million light-years from Earth. Then we had the chance to watch the famous
Ring Nebula, also catalogued as Meisser 57, which is a star’s last and spectacular dying phase, and
is 2.300 light-years from Earth. We also could look at the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, also
called Meisser 13, which is is about 145 light-years in diameter, and it is composed of several
hundred thousand stars. The M13 is about 22.200 light-years away from Earth. We also watched
the Dragonfly Open Cluster, called also the Owl Open Cluster or E.T. Open Cluster. It is called
like that for a good reason: there appear to be two prominent "eyes" and then a fainter body with
arms or wings outstretched. It is over 7.900 light-years from Earth and the estimated age is about
21 million years. The next one was the Albireo double stars. One of the stars is red and the other
is blue. Red stars are the coldest and the longest-living stars and the blue stars are the hottest and
the shortest-living stars. Finally, we saw the Double Cluster which is in the Perseus constellation.
The open clusters name are NGC 869 and NGC 884 and they lie at a distance of 7.500 light-years.

Watching the sky through telescope made me feel very small in the Universe and it was an
very interesting experience. I really hope that one day I will have the opportunity to watch the sky
through even more performant telescopes. I recommend everyone to try it, if you ever have the
chance of it.