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.