Magnuz of Sweden background to astronomy interest.
Contents.
My interest in astronomy started when I was 6 years old and moved from the nursery next to my parents' bedroom, with a small window to the northwest mostly blocked by an oak tree outside, to a "real" bedroom with a large window to the southwest, where I during clear, dark, winter nights could see the mighty constellation of Orion and the neighbouring, also rather impressive constellations of Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini, Taurus and Auriga, later in spring followed by Leo.
Soon I also got a pair of binoculars, cheap kid's toy from plastic, I think 4X35, which still made me marvel about how many more stars I could see. Later, it was replaced by first an old pair of marine binoculars 8X60, quite heavy and clumsy for a still rather small kid, that my father borrowed to me, and then a pair of modern binoculars 7X50 given to me that expanded my vision even more, and even enabled me to discern the Milky Way across the back then still not so light-polluted sky.
My father was a subscriber to "Reader's Digest" Swedish edition ("Det Bästa" in Swedish), and got both the magazine, the condensed books, and several books on especially science and history published by the Swedish publisher. In 1972, he bought the Swedish edition of Patrick Moore's "The Atlas of the Universe" ("Planeterna och Universum" in Swedish), I got to look in it, realized how much more there was out there than the stars I had looked at, and was hooked on astronomy for life. I read the book several times from start to end, and used it many more times as an encyclopedia for many years, knowing large parts of it by heart.
In 1980, I received an astronomic update for my 16th birthday, the Swedish edition of the book "The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy" ("Astronomi" in Swedish, from Albert Bonniers Förlag AB, Stockholm). To be honest, it was a lot less enticing than "Planeterna och Universum", but a lot more up to date. I read it once and then used it as an encyclopedia, in parallell with "Planeterna och Universum" for many years.
In 1978, I got access to a micro-computer my father bought for administration in his company, but which he never got the hang of, the Swedish ABC80 (Advanced Basic Computer for the 1980's), and in 1981 its follow-up ABC800. I used those computers for, among other things, astronomical simulations and visualizations for many years, actually until I bought my first "real" computer, a Macintosh LC II, in 1992.
In 1982, I started studying for a M.Sc. in chemical engineering at the Swedish technical university Royal Institute of Technology ("Kgl Tekniska Högskolan" in Swedish), and the studies and student social life took a lot of my time and attention off astronomy, as did when I started working and later, 1990-1996, made my Ph.D. in medicine at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet.
In 2007, I entered the virtual world Second Life, and after a while had learned enough to start creating scientific models and presentations there, soon with a focus on my revived interest in astronomy. It led to collaborations with NASA and several international universities, and participation in the IAU International Year of Astronomy 2009 with a virtual, interactive astronomic theme park.
In 2011, I left Second Life and moved to opensource OpenSimulator worlds, first Avination and then OSgrid, where I in the latter created several simulators with scientific content, including a large stellarium with an observatory building model.
In 2012, I moved to the OpenSimulator world Metropolis, where I continued to develop the astronomy and other scientific content until late 2014, when I became more focused on OpenSimulator infrastructure, creating navigational and statistical tools inside the virtual worlds and helped with coding and documentation of the OpenSimulator software.
In 2014, I noticed the first severe symtoms of stress and occupational burnout, was diagnosed with exhaustion depression, and underwent a number of failed rehabilitation attempts. In 2016, I quit my job as an IT developer after a number of for me disastrous changes with a botched move, re-organization, new policies and new bosses. An attempt to re-start at an interesting but rather chaotic 3D-development start-up in 2018 became even more disastrous for me and incapacitated me almost completely for many months.
In 2018, I shut down my activities in OpenSimulator virtual worlds, both for financial reasons, since I no longer had a regular income to pay for server capacity and other things, and for lack of energy and focus.
In 2019, I had recovered some from the exhaustion depression, but not enough to try a new job, so I decided to get a soft start for my brain by reading some courses of interest at the Stockholm University. I ended up with 4 courses in astronomy, which were really interesting and updated me pretty good on many things I had missed during the almost 40 years since I had last really dug into astronomy.
In spring 2020, disaster really struck, with a real bad case of COVID-19, followed by bad pneumonia and crazy inflammations, probably the cause of a blood cloth plugging the already plaqued (from stress and "well-being") right coronary artery and almost finishing me off. After a pretty botched surgery, I survived though, but the medication with beta blockers reduced both my physical and mental capacity severely, sending me down into another depression and rehabilitation attempts.
In December 2022, a new COVID-19 infection, possibly the 3rd or 4th since 2020, and also possibly combined with the regular seasonal influenza, hit pretty hard for more than a month, but strangely enough, it seemed to improve some things, with both less inflammation problems and better mental condition than before it.
In February 2023, after doing some calculations about my finances, I realized I would probably survive an early retirement, but needed something slightly more meaningful to do than to sit and feed pigeons in the park, so I decided to try the more practical aspects of astronomy, i.e. observations rather than just theory, and joined a local amateur astronomer organization, STAR (Stockholm's Amateur Astronomers, "Stockholms Amatörastronomer" in Swedish).
This page, https://magnuz.se/astro/background.html, © 2023 Magnuz of Sweden,
created 2023-03-08 and last updated 2023-04-26 by Magnuz of Sweden.