Tal Achituv has been an amateur astronomer since early childhood. Tal believes space exploration is crucial to the advancement of humanity on earth, as well as to the development of all branches of science. His interests include photography (everything from underwater to deep space), ham radio, and advancing STREAM (Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Art, and Math) education through community outreach. From his backyard observatory, Tal helps develop open source software and hardware aimed at making astronomy more accessible as a hobby, and tries to make science more accessible to the public through events and lectures.