Doug's Astronomy Page
I've been interested in astronomy all my life, although I did little active observing during the time between when I moved from Kansas City to Houston for college, and when I moved from Houston here to Colorado. I'm currently a member of two astronomical societies, the Colorado Springs Astronomical Society (CSAS) and the Denver Astronomical Society (DAS).
Astrophotos
I've been known to take pictures of stuff in the dark. Haven't really gotten anything spectacular yet, and I don't really have idea equipment for it, but I'm working on it, and this is what I've managed so far.
Rocky Mountain Star Stare 2001
This is the big annual star party thrown by CSAS every year. I always have a lot of fun there, and sometimes the weather even holds and we get to do some observing.
Rocky Mountain Star Stare 2002
Another year at the star party, and the weather would have been great if the forest hadn't caught fire Saturday night and forced us to pack it in -- other than that minor little detail, it was a good party.
The C11
The Pronto
Both scopes chillin' at RMSS 2001
My Equipment
All of my observing these days is done with two telescopes; the first is my Celestron C11, which I mount on a Losmandy G-11 mount. The C11 is an 11" Schmidt-Cassegrain catadioptric telescope (meaning it contains both lenses and mirrors), and the G-11 is a big honkin' German equatorial mount with dual-axis drives, to which I added digital setting circles (which I honestly seldom use -- I've never had trouble finding objects, which is really what they're for).My other scope is a Televue Pronto, which I generally mount on a Telepod mount (a small, reasonably portable altazimuth mount). The Pronto is a 70mm (2.7") refractor, and is my "portable" telescope (I took it to Maryland when I was working there on a contract in the summer of 2000, and I've been keeping track of all the places it's been). I switched over to all 2" eyepieces and such when I got the these telescopes, as I'm a rich-field junkie (for those of you who don't know what that means, it means I like wide fields). So, I generally look through both telescopes with Televue Nagler eyepieces, although I do have a token 35mm Panoptic (often referred to as "the grenade").
And that pretty much covers the high points.
