It all started with a visit to a mall in Fort Collins, Colo. And now, there’s no end in sight.

If George Krausse wasn’t bit by the astronomy bug that winter day several years ago, it wasn’t long after.

That fateful day, his wife, Savita, pointed at a box and announced that the telescope inside was just what the family needed for Christmas. So they bought it, enjoyed it a couple of times, and right back in the box it went.

Which is how these stories usually end.

But then, Krausse’s daughter pulled the old telescope out for a high school project and enlisted her father’s help.

They took photos through the telescope and finished the report, and Krausse became enthused.

Now, he’s an electrical engineer for Microsemi Corp. in Bend by day, an accomplished amateur astronomer by night.

Krausse’s hobby followed a predictable trajectory. He bought a 4-inch scope, then an 8-incher. The family moved to a rural neighborhood east of Bend in 2004, and Krausse brought his new computer-controlled 12-inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with him. It’s set up right outside his snug little observatory out back, where he enjoys the night sky year-round. For perspective, the two main telescopes at Pine Mountain Observatory are 15-inch and 24-inch models.

“I get to kind of pretend I’m Captain Kirk,” he said. “I can sit behind the computer and search the stars.”

At 61, Krausse lights up with youthful exuberance when he speaks of his astronomical adventures. Far from a dabbler, Krausse now takes photos of distant stars and planets with a specially designed digital camera.

“It’s like fishing,” Krausse said. “Once I’ve seen an object, I can move on. There’s an infinite number of objects to look at. There are nights here when the sky is almost black and (it) looks almost like diamonds studded across the sky.”

An unobstructed field of view and a dearth of light pollution were major factors when the Krausses settled on their acreage east of Bend.

This space, according to Krausse, is nearly perfect.

“It’s an adventure,” he said. “To be able to see a nebula with your own eye is really fun. (And) a pair of binoculars is great.”

According to Krausse, it’s feasible to view Jupiter, Mars and the rings of Saturn with a modest pair of binoculars.

“It’s a neat hobby,” Krausse said. “You don’t have to have all of this stuff to do it.”

But it doesn’t hurt. His high-tech, ulta-sensitive gear has opened up a whole new universe to Krausse and the friends and family members he shares his hobby with.

One night, he was “trying to catch Venus,” Krausse recalled, when a jet liner passed directly in front of his field of vision.

“You could see the windows, everything,” he said.

Most clear nights, Krausse makes the necessary adjustments to his 12-inch telescope, which sits in the middle of a concrete slab next to the observatory. Then he slips inside the door of the one-room structure and sets sail for galaxies far, far away. He can see all the action from his computer screen in warmth and comfort.

It’s a quarter of a million miles to the moon, much farther to the Perseus spiral arms of Milky Way (try 36,000,000,000,000 miles or so).

Krausse recently packed up his 10-inch telescope and camera equipment and spent a month on a remote sheep ranch in Australia, looking at the sky.

Krausse insists that catching the astronomy bug is not unlike falling prey to a saltwater fishing or off-road motorcycle addiction (both hobbies he pursued in the past).

And the cost of admission to Krausse’s nebula?

“It’s a boat or a couple of snowmobiles,” he acknowledged.

Krausse is looking forward to mid-December, a period of time when “Mars is going to be really good.”

So good that the Krausses are going to have a Mars party next month — with coffee, wine and snacks — in the middle of the night.

Krausse looks back on his fledgling steps into astronomy that fateful winter day at the mall in Colorado with a chuckle.

“I really got into it,” he said.