Astronomy

"The American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) is a worldwide, nonprofit, scientific and educational organization of amateur and professional astronomers who are interested in variable stars. Its purpose is to coordinate, collect, evaluate, analyze, publish, and archive variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers, and to make these observations available to professional astronomers, researchers, and educators." Click here to visit the AAVSO website. I have been a member of the AAVSO since 1975.  Being part of this exciting collaboration between amateur and professional astronomers has been an extremely rewarding experience.  Director Janet Mattei once said, "To me, an observation of a variable star is not a number, not a statistic. It's something very much alive. I see the brightness estimate and imagine the observer's face light up as he or she looks at the star through a telescope."  Every time I find a new variable star, ...

My first real telescope was a 4 1/4 inch Palomar Jr. from Edmund Scientific.  I got it for my birthday when I was 10 years old.  A picture of it from an advertisement is shown here.  It came with two eyepieces and a barlow lens.  The possible magnifications were 40, 90, 120, and 270.  I used the lowest power most of the time, and searched for deep sky objects.  I remember being especially excited when I first found M57, the Ring Nebula.  Now I observe with three telescops: an Orion 120 mm short tube refractor (for low power wide field views), an Orion 127mm Maksutov Cassegrain (for higher power views of the planets), and a 10 inch Orion Dobsonian (for observing fainter objects).  All three are extremely portable.  I can set them up on the deck within a just few minutes. When used with a 26mm wide field eyepiece, the refractor provides a 3 degree field of view at a magnification of 23x. The Maksutov is shown equipped with William Optics bin...

Astronomy has been my hobby for over 50 years.  I especially enjoy observing variable stars, and have been a member of the AAVSO since 1975. I grew up in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.  Some neighborhood friends and I first got interested in astronomy during the late 1950's, right before the time of Sputnik.  We would call each other up and ask, "Do you want to go astronomying tonight?"  That's why I have always thought of "astronomy" as a verb rather than as a noun.  It's something you do , not just something you read about. More and more kids in the neighborhood became interested, and we started a club.  At one point I think there were almost 30 of us.  Richard R. Fink, a member of the Milwaukee Astronomical Society generously offered to be our teacher.  In December of 1958, he gave us a book with this inscription: "Use this book to your advantage.  The book itself can be destroyed but not the knowledge you can gain from it.  Go out and do o...