petersurma
May 15th, 2023, 05:12 PM
Hi there,
thanks for welcoming me to your community.
As to me: I've loved astronomy for a looong time. Even made it my profession - for some limited time (incl 2yrs in the UK). But earning a living with it, long-term, was much too hard. Much easier to work in software industries, I can tell. So with some twist of attitude, I am back to doing it as an ambitious hobby nowadays - though, for sure, very much like everybody else here.
Around 1975, started off with a real horrible 2" f/18 refractor (eyepieces even more horrible). Bravely, I was observing M51 from a town home with it, and hunting Ceres using Becvar's Atlas Coeli 1950.0 or sketching the Theophilius group on the moon, observed comet West in 1976 (was it?), of course. Joined a 2200km bus trip to southern spain to see/photograph (on Kodak 103a-O film) a comparably tiny comet Halley - these sort of things...
Around 1987 - slight increase of aperture - observing around the world with up to 3.5m class telescopes, CCDs + (a ton of) spectrograph attached, never LOOKING thru of course - what a pity! :-) Exiting the game 1996 for a proper job.
Since 2007 - major slide in aperture again, OMG - I use a pure manual 20" f/4 dobson with Naglers, under skies up to 21.4...6mag/sq.arcsec (after a 1-3hours drive). Galaxies is my main 'business', but basically I'm into everything as long as it's interesting, well yes, to me.
My website eyes4skies.de (http://eyes4skies.de/) is in German - really sorry for this ! (pls use 'electric' translators, maybe I'll find time for proper translations). Recently, upgraded the site to a new major (v2) version (old v1 links remain working). Major assets are basically:
(1) obs reports (http://eyes4skies.de/v2/obsrep/obsrep.htm) since 2007
(2) xref (http://eyes4skies.de/v2/xref/xref.htm) page interlinking back/forth my (personal) object cat & my obs reports. This is a (software-generated) tool for myself really. I use it (i) obs time (w/notebook next to the scope, interlinkage w/GUIDE 9.1) AND (ii) for 'documentation' (myself + the web). A list of TBO='to be observed' objects, though - well, that's still an anxiously kept secret :-)
Too much said anyway, actually I am looking forward to discussing with you.
And, of course, grateful to benefit from your huge pool of joint experience. Wow !
Kind regards, hopefully clear skies soon,
Peter
PS: An english language resource on my site is a report from the 2006 Solar Eclipse in Turkey (http://eyes4skies.de/Internet/Astro/BeobachtungsReports/SolarEclipse_Side2006_EnglishVersion.htm).
However better don't navigate around from there (it's deep in my old v1 HTML) better use the main entry (http://eyes4skies.de/v2/HOME/home.htm) (v2) thereafter, sorry for this.
.
thanks for welcoming me to your community.
As to me: I've loved astronomy for a looong time. Even made it my profession - for some limited time (incl 2yrs in the UK). But earning a living with it, long-term, was much too hard. Much easier to work in software industries, I can tell. So with some twist of attitude, I am back to doing it as an ambitious hobby nowadays - though, for sure, very much like everybody else here.
Around 1975, started off with a real horrible 2" f/18 refractor (eyepieces even more horrible). Bravely, I was observing M51 from a town home with it, and hunting Ceres using Becvar's Atlas Coeli 1950.0 or sketching the Theophilius group on the moon, observed comet West in 1976 (was it?), of course. Joined a 2200km bus trip to southern spain to see/photograph (on Kodak 103a-O film) a comparably tiny comet Halley - these sort of things...
Around 1987 - slight increase of aperture - observing around the world with up to 3.5m class telescopes, CCDs + (a ton of) spectrograph attached, never LOOKING thru of course - what a pity! :-) Exiting the game 1996 for a proper job.
Since 2007 - major slide in aperture again, OMG - I use a pure manual 20" f/4 dobson with Naglers, under skies up to 21.4...6mag/sq.arcsec (after a 1-3hours drive). Galaxies is my main 'business', but basically I'm into everything as long as it's interesting, well yes, to me.
My website eyes4skies.de (http://eyes4skies.de/) is in German - really sorry for this ! (pls use 'electric' translators, maybe I'll find time for proper translations). Recently, upgraded the site to a new major (v2) version (old v1 links remain working). Major assets are basically:
(1) obs reports (http://eyes4skies.de/v2/obsrep/obsrep.htm) since 2007
(2) xref (http://eyes4skies.de/v2/xref/xref.htm) page interlinking back/forth my (personal) object cat & my obs reports. This is a (software-generated) tool for myself really. I use it (i) obs time (w/notebook next to the scope, interlinkage w/GUIDE 9.1) AND (ii) for 'documentation' (myself + the web). A list of TBO='to be observed' objects, though - well, that's still an anxiously kept secret :-)
Too much said anyway, actually I am looking forward to discussing with you.
And, of course, grateful to benefit from your huge pool of joint experience. Wow !
Kind regards, hopefully clear skies soon,
Peter
PS: An english language resource on my site is a report from the 2006 Solar Eclipse in Turkey (http://eyes4skies.de/Internet/Astro/BeobachtungsReports/SolarEclipse_Side2006_EnglishVersion.htm).
However better don't navigate around from there (it's deep in my old v1 HTML) better use the main entry (http://eyes4skies.de/v2/HOME/home.htm) (v2) thereafter, sorry for this.
.