INTRODUCTION Growing up in the Santa Clara Valley in California I lived in a dreamland for anyone in love with nature Orchards full of quail and pheasant stretched as far as a young person could hike in a day The white pink and blue blossoms of fruit trees filled the air when gentle breezes blew in from the Pacific Ocean Half an hour away tide pools and clear cold waters awaited the young underwater explorer It was a nature lover's paradise My bedroom was filled with insect collections pressed wildflowers fossils terrariums and model airplanes On the walls were posters and drawings of planets and galaxies and in the corner stood my trusty three inch reflecting telescope which I constructed all by myself photo illustration at right For the mirror of my telescope I had used two glass casters borrowed from my grandmother's four poster bed The casters were like small glass cups that people used to put beneath the legs of their beds so that the legs wouldn't scratch the floor I had ground the casters together with abrasives purchased from a rock shop then polished them using a mixture of water and jeweler's rouge on top of sticky pitch collected from our cherry tree INTRODUCTION SPACE ENCYCLOPEDIA
My eyepiece was Today I am part of one of the constructed from largest astronomical research organizations two slightly chipped organizations in the world the Harvard lenses salvaged from the pirate spyglass Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics my brotherbought at the county fair Our observatories are located on mountaintops I glued the lenses inside the plastic top mountaintops in Chile Arizona and Hawaii of a mouthwash bottle My cardboard and in orbit above our heads in space telescope tube came from the trash bin When I come to work each morning behind a carpet store and my mount I never know what great discovery was made from scrap lumber and a few may await me inexpensive plumbers pipe fittings A The discoveries astronomers make little paint here and there and I was in sometimes change the way we think business exploring the universe about ourselves and our place in the universe My telescope worked better than universe In the next 25 years we may know anything Galileo used to make his the answers to these really big questions discoveries I named it Mable after What caused the big bang What invisible my grandmother force is speeding up the expansion of the The first thing I looked at was the universe Are there other universes out moon I saw craters flat valleys and there besides our own What type of life mountains everywhere Seeing the moons exists on other planets Are there other of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn opened Earth worlds out there And maybe my eyes and imagination in ways I had once and for all what is this phenomenon never experienced before Little did I we call UFOs all about know that my hobby would someday This is why I love astronomy so become my career much The biggest questions regarding Besides telescopes there was something our universe are waiting to be answered something else that drew me to astronomy It Somewhere out there in the world today was the mystery of UFOs In my young are the future scientists who will find the mind the same question kept popping up answers to these great questions Maybe What if they are real What if they really one of them will be you are out there DAVID A AGUILAR SPACE ENCYCLOPEDIA INTRODUCTION
After the big bang that gove rise to our universe stars began to form from clouds of gas and dust WHAT WE KNOW SPACE ENCYCLOPEDIA
