Eight-year-old makes a wish at George Observatory
A battle with retinal cancer left 8-year-old Emanuel Salgado with vision in only one eye, but that has not dampened the third grader’s interest in becoming a space scientist.
Emanuel did not know what to expect when he walked up to the Houston Museum of Natural Science George Observatory with his family and saw a crowd waiting at the top of the stairs, rows of chairs lined up in front of a table draped with a cloth that read “Make-A-Wish.”
He had even brought his GT Expo project about the solar system with him to the observatory.
The anticipation was palpable as his hands instinctively reached out, his fingers brushing a star-covered blue sheet draped over an unknown object — his own high-powered personal telescope to take home.
“I was so interested in space that I’ve been researching it since the first grade,” Emanuel said. He already knows the subject of his next project: the Andromeda galaxy, because it is the closest to our own, he explained.
Emanuel’s interest in space is why he and his family, who live in Willowbrook, had been invited to spend the evening at the observatory in Brazos Bend
State Park. Make-A-Wish Texas Gulf Coast and Louisiana along with Shell and the Houston Museum of Natural Science presented Emanuel with a private viewing through the George Observatory telescope.
When the sheet was pulled back and his telescope was revealed, Emanuel’s attention shifted toward the tool he would use to explore the night sky.
Emanuel barely looked up from his examination of the telescope’s eyepiece and laserguided sight as his father, Carmelo Salgado, spoke his thanks to the assembled crowd, his voice choking back emotion and tears rolling out from behind his sunglasses.
“It makes me grateful to know that God loves me enough to see the things I love reflected in my son,” Salgado said in Spanish. He had loved space since he was a boy, and watching his son discover his own love of space as he grew has only strengthened their father-son bond. “It’s something that I shared from the bottom of my heart.”
After the presentation, as the sun set on a clear night over the park, George Observatory astronomer Hannah Lange pointed out constellations as they slowly appeared in the darkening sky. Inside the large dome of the observatory, director of astronomy Tracy Knauss was positioning the giant telescope inside to focus on a piece of Orion’s sword. Knauss’ own love of the stars also started as a child around the same age as Emanuel. Before the George Observatory’s telescope was even at the park, Knauss was gathering with fellow astronomers in the parking lot of the Brazos Bend State Park nature center to take advantage of the relatively dark skies. Now she shares that experience with visitors like Emanuel through events like the observatory’s weekly Saturday night stargazing events.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science George Observatory’s participation in Emanuel’s wish started simply, said Kavita Self, senior director of HMNS Sugar Land and George Observatory. Make-A-Wish came to the museum for a suggestion on a make and model of a telescope for Emanuel. When they told museum staff they had an aspiring scientist on their hands, the museum realized they wanted to do more.
“Because the observatory is all about showing people the wonders of the night sky,” Self said, “and this is where his passion was, we wanted to create an opportunity for his telescope reveal to be right here where we could teach him how to use it, and that he would actually get to try it out that night surrounded by family, surrounded by friends.”
With the sky dark, Emanuel, his father, mother and sister were the first to walk into the observatory and stand on the platform as it slowly lifted into place, taking the visitors up to the telescope’s eyepiece. Emanuel craned his neck, stretching his body to peer into the eyepiece for a look across the cosmos.
“We live for the wow moment. We love that moment when you’re explaining something or you’re showing something, especially to a child, and their eyes light up and they get it. Because they are seeing and interacting with science in a completely different way,” Self said.
“It’s wonderful what you learn in school,” she continued, “but to be able to actually interact with it in real time, in real life, that’s an amazing thing. So when we got to see him first put his eye up to his own telescope, and then to look in the big scope, that’s really what it’s all about.”