See if you agree with more than one of these reasons. They are not in any special order. The world we live in is stunning in its beauty, its variety and its depth of organisation. Most of us are eager to learn about the whole world we live in. Our interest does not stop at our local ecology or the events of our current decade.
Modern astronomy is an exhilarating science .
As an advertisement for science, it is hard to beat. In the first year astronomy course you will probably hear and see more modern scientific results than most final Honours courses deliver. Astronomy is an excellent subject to learn how science works . Data is hard to come by and the skill of deduction has to be honed to the highest. Astronomy is old enough to illustrate how science matures and is self-correcting.