Astronomy
My main astronomy interests are public outreach
and “sidewalk astronomy”,
enough theory to support those,
and climbing the learning curve of astrophotography.
This section of the site contains a variety of articles, organized as follows:
- Equipment
- Reviews and comments on various amateur astronomy equipment that I have used.
- Notes on finding DSOs
- My own notes on how to find various easy observing targets, gradually organized into a directory
suitable for beginners.
The instructions use a very basic form of star-hopping, mentally judging easy
distances from visible objects.
- Papers (formal)
- A small number of essays and papers written for astronomy courses.
- Writings (informal)
- A larger collection of informal web articles, generally written to provide beginners with advice on a
specific topic.
(These grew out of the frequent repetition of the same advice in response to questions
in various astronomy forums.)
- Articles for RASC
- Copies of some articles written for the web site, newsletter,
or monthly meetings of the Ottawa Centre,
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
- Images
- A gallery of some astronomical images.
Only the moderately successful ones make it here, so it’s a small
collection.
- Observatory journal
- A separate web site acts as the official journal of my backyard observatory.