I am now the owner of a telescope. It’s hard to say whether I’m proud or embarrassed; it depends on who I’m talking to. Opinions on astronomy, while perhaps not as diverse as those on immigration or inheritance tax, do vary considerably. So before raising the topic, I’ll throw a qualifying question into the conversation early to help gauge their likely reaction. For example, “So… what are your thoughts on Brian Cox?… No, no – the other one?”

As a birthday present, a telescope is simultaneously magical and underwhelming. If you want to look at things in the night sky, it really is the door to a new world. But given that we live in the UK, where the night sky is obscured by heavy cloud cover, that door is frequently locked. It took several weeks following my birthday before I was able to use the telescope for the first time, by which point much of the initial euphoria had waned. And, as I began to make sense of the accompanying – and appropriately named – StarSense app, the clouds returned and I had to call it a night, without having seen a thing.

A telescope is a particularly problematic gift if your birthday arrives a fortnight before the longest day of the year. Even on the sort of dour and miserably gloomy evening we’re accustomed to in Britain, the daylight doesn’t entirely disappear until post 11pm, when you’re generally too exhausted to lug a heavy telescope out into the garden and attempt to locate a star you’ve never heard of.

By July, I began telling myself that I was holding out for the winter; that those cold, clear, pristine December evenings held the key to unlocking this new pastime. But of course, when all of your friends and family have contributed to such an expensive present, when your other half has gone to great lengths to research the best models (as opposed to popping into the nearest Argos), and when the item in question stands dominantly in the middle of your kitchen, this rationalisation doesn’t wash.

I felt the obligation to be a star-gazer in the present, not just the future tense. And yet the more I began to pay attention to the task at hand, the more obstacles began to present themselves. I’d read articles telling me I could see the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus – the two planets allegedly kissing at dawn – only to find out that this would require me to get up at 3am. And lug a heavy telescope out into the garden. And hope that my garden was facing in the right direction.

Plainly I am not going to do this. I may be a chronic insomniac, but at no point during my thirty years of middle-of-the-night sleeplessness have I thought to myself, “I should go out into the garden.”

Privately, by this stage I was beginning to despair. And then after that rarest of events – a night out on a double-date – we spotted the full moon in our taxi journey home. Within minutes, we were out in the back garden gazing in wonderment at the battered and bruised rock hanging suspended in the night sky. Not only has the telescope already paid for itself, it has reignited my earlier dreams of becoming an astronaut. And, thanks to the noble efforts of pioneers like Katy Perry, I feel this (teenage) dream has never been closer.