Dog-Star Observatory

This is Dog-Star Observatory 2. It was in Pennsylvania Furnace, where I lived for 30 years with Rothrock State Forest in my backyard and maybe Bortle 2-3 conditions. It was only a 10 min drive to the Penn State Campus where I had my office.

Another view of DSO-2. It had a 10 inch dobsonian. But I also had a computer there and wi-fi connection to my house. No drives, no photography.

This is Max - my third GSD. A most wonderful puppy and my companion through the lonely years.

View from the back

at night. I also had a stereo and would play Yes and Pink Floyd.

I used the laptop to get to online star atlases, also to communicate with other amateure in real-time across the world.

Me and my first scope. 2.5" Sears refractor. Not very useful from the steel mill valleys of Pittsburgh but sometimes i would carry it to the workhouse farm up the hill from my house. Better viewing there.

Allegheny Observatory. I spent a lot of time here as a teen and then later as a Pitt employee. In thelater stage i got to run the computers from a nice air-conditioned room on the inside of the dome.

The 30 inch Thaw refractor. I actually was allowed to play with it when it was not being used. Bright planetaries and planets showed up amazingly!

This is from one of the solar occultations of Venus. I do not remember if it were the morning or evening one but i did get both.

Me and Max in the living room of my PA home. Max was my 3'rd GSD. I love the breed and am now with #5 (Harley) He will likely outlive me.

When I worked at Pitt I had my 2.5 inch scope at my office. On sunny days I would make drawings of sunspots. One friend brought a Questar and took this pic.

I spent a week in Pittsburgh with a new IBM-pc portable. I was bored so I wrote an early planitarium program in Basic, and distributed it for free. One of myfriends donated a copy to the Rpyal Observatory in the UK. It was soon superceded by good planetarium programs but mine was one of the first. Showed 500 stars, moon and planets from any where on earth at any time between 1900 and 2500.

I decided to take my family to Richmond for the 1984 annular eclipse. At Richmond it was raining and raining. So i got the fam up and we started heading south and west. As the clouds broke I noticed a police car behind me with lights on. He had seen my eclipse sign and gave us an escort to where we watched it. He must have called others because about 20 other people joined us. But horror! I left my telescope tripod in my garage back home. Luckily someone had duct tape and i managed totape the scope to the roof of my car in a way that it projected the ground on a screen.

This is a great 5 minute shot of Comet Hale-Bopp from my house in PA. I mounted a 35mm camera on my 2.5 inch refractor and used the refractor to guide it. Worked out great!

Nice pic of Comet Hayukatake taken with camera mounted on 2.5 inch scope and hand guiding.

Comet Bennet from 1970. This view is through the 13 inch refractor at Allegheny Observatory

This is another drawing of Coomet Bennett. I used a 4" Newtonian reflector and made the drawing froom my back yard in Blawnox, PA.

Nice evening Moon from my PA home.

My setup at one of the Cherry Springs Star parties.

Also at Cherry Springs. I helped found the star party and went for many years.

At one of the Cherry Springs star parties we had an amazing Aurora!

One of my co-workers at Penn State Computer Center made this for me. Klingons do not test code - they EXECUTE IT!