41° 17' 16" N  -  84° 22' 26" W

As the Years Passed...

Eventually, my brother John and I got our own telescope (an 80mm refractor) and, with Dad's guidance, found our way to many familiar objects. We really enjoyed tracking the planets.  It was always exciting to watch the planets wander through the constellations. The most impressive views were usually of Jupiter and Saturn.  Soon we turned our attention to the brighter "Deep-Sky Objects" (DSO's) - The Andromeda Galaxy (M31), Hercules Cluster (M13) and the Orion Nebula (M42) were begging for me to capture them on film.  We also viewed many solar and lunar eclipses, meteor showers, and several comets. I was very fortunate in that midway through 8th grade, our class moved into a new Junior High School building which had a state-of-the-art planetarium.  I couldn't get enough free time to spend there!  I was actively involved in its operation in both Junior High and High School.

Since one of  Dad's hobbies was photography, he eagerly taught us the basics and even gave us some of his older cameras which I started using immediately to photograph the heavens.

In 1976, John and I purchased a new Meade 8" Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with dual-axis motor drives. Finally we had a scope that followed objects across the sky. We still had to manually locate everything we wanted to observe, but our prior experience really helped us find our way around.  The scope would "track" both stars and planets, always keeping them centered in the eyepiece.

M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

Jupiter