New Hobbies this year
Happy 2008 everyone!
So in true Aries style, my hobbies have expanded this year.
After putting my Masters in Astronomy on hold for a while, I thought I’d get back into more observational Astronomy. It’s been a long time since I was an active observer. After acquiring a nice pair of 10 x 50 Nikon binoculars over Christmas, I set out with a planisphere, star atlas and journal in hand and spent some time reacquiring myself with the wonderful night sky. Mars is extremely bright in the sky at the moment, having been at its closest approach for a few years. You can’t miss it - Look up between the top stars of Orion and the twins of Gemini (Castor and Pollux) and that bright and orange star is Mars.
My other hobby hasn’t actually started yet, and arose out of a dream we have had for some time to climb Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa and the highest single peak in the world. At 19,000 feet, we need to get in training! This isn’t a walk in the park, folks. We plan to climb it in 2010, so our latest hobby for the next 2 years will be hiking and climbing ever-higher peaks close at home until we are worthy of tackling Kili. I figured we’ll start at local 1500′ hills and work our way up to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States at 14,500 feet. (Denali in Alaska is higher, at 20,320′)
