So with the vast amounts of time that I've been spending holed up in my room in light of my recent run-in with the law (or my mother, if I'm being less dramatic), I've decided to finally assemble this star-gazing kit that I think I got from my birthday when I was about 7 (6? 8? who cares, is what you're really thinking right now). Weird, right? I just decided that maybe I'll be a backyard astronomer. I finally managed to put together the telescope, which is actually pretty neat now that I'm no longer looking at my own massive black-hole (yeah - I did forget to take the protective film off, don't judge). The kit comes with these pretty neat constellation-finders that go over the end of the telescope. There's one for each season and another for general use (I'm guessing this is why the kit says "for ages 6 and above")? The keyword was "backyard" in the aforementioned phrase "backyard astronomer".

So like any grounded (read: bored-off-their-ass) person would do, I put the "autumn" constellation-finder over the end of the telescope and proceeded to find the Andromeda and Pisces constellations (maybe)? I'm getting a kick out of this stuff, really. When I was little, I once heard that you could use the stars like a map, so I asked my dad how to do it. He started in about how you had to pick a star (North Star, I think), and had to know where other stars were and what their altitude should have been, and then you had to measure the angles, draw imaginary lines, and so on and so forth. When he turned and saw my face, he laughed. "Exactly," he said. "Never leave home without your GPS".

I'm thinking about it now, and it doesn't really seem so hard. Just head to the place where all those lines cross and hope for the best.