astronomy

It started as something I thought my kids would get into. I bought an 8" Celestron Star Hopper for a family Christmas present. The kids never really got hooked, but I did. Here is a clip of the first sky event we saw with our new scope. It was a lunar eclipse in January. Very cold, but very exciting for amateurs.

We plan our vacation around dark sites, the new moon and hopefully clear skies. The clearsky clocks have been really helpful for finding good locations, the light map of North America laid over Google Earth allows us to seek out the best observing we can get to in our van.

Now I have more equipment, more gadgets and more telescopes. Some of the best sights in the night sky are with binoculars from a loungechair. I belong to KC SLUG (Kansas City Starlight User Group)- we meet once a month and try to find good observing locations near home. One of the places I go is called Baltimore Bend. It's a Missouri Conservation Area and is about as dark a place as I can find within an hour from home. It's not as dark as it used to be even a couple years ago.

Finding dark places is getting harder to do, especially when businesses like McDonalds use sweeping search lights on their roofs. The beams from those things are visible for miles and it's not like it's hard to find a McDonalds restaurant. I boycott them now because they haven't been very helpful with my complaints about the lights. They like to point out how "green" they are on their corporate site, but meanwhile they waste all those kilowatts pointing lights at the stars and polluting the night sky. The best viewing is at high altitudes out west. We've even see the Milky Way throw a shadow on moonless nights. There's also a lot of cool stuff to explore during the day.

So, when the nights are NOT clear (usually), I invent or make new gadgets for observing or camping. Go look at some of them on my "things" page.

Here are some pictures from the backyard.

the planet Mars the planet Saturn