Who's Who?

My interest in astronomy was inspired by my mother, who used to show me a few constellations that she knew on the rare clear nights of Bangalore, India where I grew up. Somewhere around 9th grade (2003), I began poking around the GNU/Linux operating system and happened to come across the software KStars. The attractively named deep-sky objects – Beehive Cluster, Sunflower Galaxy, Whirlpool Galaxy – they captivated me, how I longed to see them one day. Imagine my joy when I learned a couple years later that I too could make a telescope at the local astronomy club!

The Association of Bangalore Amateur Astronomers nurtured my interest in astronomy and that's where I made (poorly) my first telescope – an 8" f/8 Newtonian reflector on a German equatorial mount, finishing it in 2005. I also learned about Messier's catalog and the basics of deep-sky observation. I spent many nights on my light-polluted roof-top with the Edmund Mag 5 Star Atlas, determined to find every object plotted in it. Somewhere along, I met my first observing buddy, Amar Sharma. Amar and I spent many nights at our local observing sites checking off galaxies from the Cambridge Star Atlas, which goes a lot deeper than the Edmund Mag 5. Around this time, I was heavily involved in nurturing the newly formed Bangalore Astronomical Society. By year 2007, Amar and I had probably checked off some 250+ deep-sky objects, and my interest was waning, getting weary of the featureless smudges.

That's when we found out about an excellent website, called Adventures in Deep Space! Amar showed me the many advanced observing projects reported on it, and looking at one Mr. Steve Gottlieb's reports through a 17.5-inch telescope made me go beg my generous father to buy me one. In March 2009, I got a huge delivery from California in two boxes – a Discovery 17.5" f/5 split-tube dob! By Indian standards back then, this was a very very expensive telescope and I can't thank my father enough for going out of his way to get it for me. Suddenly, galaxies came alive with detail! I was seeing spiral arms, HII regions, extragalactic globular clusters – carefully culled from the pages of this website. The scope, probably the biggest dob in India at that time, was also used heavily for outreach. It all got me hooked to the hobby again.

My time with the 17.5-inch was short-lived as my graduate studies took me to Texas. The day I got my PhD program admit from the University of Texas, I dreamed of attending the famous Texas Star Party. I contacted then fellow graduate student, John Tatarchuk to learn about observing in Texas and quickly found out that I needed to learn how to drive! After deciding it was infeasible to bring my 17.5-inch over to the states, I ended up buying John's 18" f/4.5 Obsession classic (he had upgraded to a 25") sometime around 2011 and have observed with it since until 2024. The mirror was made by OMI and re-figured at John's behest. During my 7 years in Texas, I was a member of the Austin Astronomical Society and benefited greatly from AAS member Greg Taylor's generosity in allowing me to observe from his property in central Texas.

I attended my first Texas Star Party in 2012, it was a blast! Little did I know that the skies were excellent that year – too bad I'd assumed that was as typical as any other year! I've visited the star party fairly regularly since, although of late I tend to spend time observing with my esteemed friend Jimi Lowrey and his incredible 48-inch f/4 monster dob! In 2017, I graduated with my PhD (in physics) and moved to California's silicon valley to become a software engineer. Since 2016, I have regularly attended the Golden State Star Party.

I can't lie that I'm addicted to dark skies. I will do what it takes to travel to Bortle 2 or Bortle 1 skies for multiple nights with my telescopes. I prefer being on BLM or forest land as there are fewer restrictions on dispersed camping and setting up a telescope. I tend to sleep in my pick-up truck during the day and have gotten better at it over the years. I like to look at galaxies, especially peculiar / interacting galaxies, and clusters and compact groups of galaxies. I lack patience for systematic observing programs, and generally like to sample a variety of cool objects on any given night. More recently, I have become interested in diffuse nebulae as well.

New to me is a 28" f/4.1 dob, which I purchased from Jimi Lowrey and restored with the help of Mark Wagner, Randy Pufahl and others. It is still a work-in-progress but I am already thrilled by the new, deeper views that it unlocks. I therefore now use three instruments – the 28", the 18" and 25×100 binoculars which are mounted on a parallelogram mount. I have come to appreciate the joy of scanning the skies with the big binoculars – they are a powerful instrument and have their place in my observing. I am eagerly waiting to motorize my 28" so that I can go deeper and look at tidal tails and galactic trainwrecks for many nights to come!

(Bio pending)

(Bio pending)

I started in the hobby as a kid, in the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. My parents bought me what I've come to learn was a 4.25" reflector. With it I saw stars that vibrated and changed colors, through the spectrum. I thought that was very cool. I saw Saturn. I must have been 12 years old. I thought I could see Saturn elongated without optical aid, back then.

I lost interest in astronomy shortly thereafter, not to pick it up again until college, when I took it as a science lecture and science lab course. I went on a field trip to Glacier Point in Yosemite with the class, unknowingly looked through John Dobson's telescope at a galaxy, and asked myself "what's the big excitement". My interest again waned when the class ended.

In 1990 my son was in first grade and went to a planetarium. He came home excited at what he'd seen, which piqued my interest again. I found the San Jose Astronomical Association listed in a September Sky and Telescope, went to one of their public star parties, and I've been observing ever since.

My first telescope as an adult was a 10.1" f/4.5 Coulter Odessey. I had a great time sitting on my driveway in Los Gatos, sweeping the sky, looking for any sign of anything at all. I used the Edmonds' Mag 6 Atlas, and had some fun... for about a year. Then I heard people talking about Fremont Peak. I drove up, astonished at the road I had to take to get there. But I had a great time, and became a regular, even doing Fremont Peak Observatory Association public programs running the 30" Challenger telescope.

Soon I moved up to a 14.5" f/5.6 Dob, loaned to me by a long time observing buddy, when he bought himself a 20" Obsession. I logged thousands of objects in that scope. I bought the 20" from my friend, owned it for 9 months, and found it too much work for the amount of gain over an 18".

So, I ended up with an 18" Obsession, which I use to this day. I'm still very happy with it. I currently observe Hicksons, Abell Galaxy Clusters, Galaxy Trios, Abell Planetaries, Shakhbazian Galaxy Groups, targets on the Arp Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies, and anything that Steve comes up with! There's always something to do. I also volunteer at Lick Observatory on average a couple times a year. Its fun to do, and open to anyone who wants to, just by signing up.

I am obviously an avid visual observer, usually seen with my 18" f/4.5 Obsession at star parties several times a month. Amateur telescope making captured my interest several years ago (the Coulter was first "under the knife", and I have since moved into commercial telescope making by designing and manufacturing the Compact Precision Telescope.

I founded TAC in the mid 90's and participated in the founding of several parties including CalStar, the Mount Lassen Star Party, Nelms Star Party, SSP and (now the highlight of my astronomy year) the Golden State Star Party.

One of the true highlights of my astronomy hobby was a in 2006, when I traveled to Chile and met some of my astronomy friends for about ten days of travel and observing in the country. You can read about the trip on Ray Cash's web-page in the "Why Chile" section, and get an idea about what we observed in his observing notes. Chile was a great place to go as culturally it was distinctly different from our modern "Americanized" western society, the sections I visited were extremes - as desolate as you can imagine (beauty indeed walks a razor's edge) and, much like the Napa Valley of my home state. And the people - in La Serena, Vicuna, Pisco Elqui and Alcohuaz - they gave the place a soul that I've only seen represented accurately in the movies "The Motorcycle Diaries" and "Machuca". Viva Chile, heart and soul of the astronomy world!

Another highlight is my daughter Mimi's interest in the hobby. Here she is as Sky & Telescope's original "Messier Monster" on the cover of their September 2000 publication. I've enjoyed a lifelong interest in astronomy, and feel I've already passed that on to the next generation. Mimi still accompanies me to star parties each year, even now that she's in her early 20's.

I live in San Jose, where mag 4 is a good night. So I travel far and wide within California for better skies. My local observing sites are primarily Henry Coe State Park, or private property sites like Willow Springs or Plettstone. I go on average twice a year to Mount Lassen Volcanic National Park and point more remote - to Adin, where GSSP is held, for the best skies I can easily get to.

My other interests include the California wine country, hiking, live theater, modern art, Sufi poetry, and Aikido to keep me sharp. But my true passion is and will continue to be, visual astronomy. I enjoy the hunt - as a star-hopper. I enjoy teasing out detail, moments of exquisite seeing, and most of all - seeing others get out and enjoy the hobby too...

I always hearken back to what one of my long time observing friends, Jay Reynolds Freeman, referred to astronomy as "Celestial bird watching".

My life list is quite long. It will outlast me...

Clear skies,

Mark

Photo by Randy Muller I live in the little town of Albany (1 square mile) just north of Berkeley, California. We moved here when I my daughter entered kindergarten (she's now a PhD student at UC Davis) because of the school district's good reputation and I ended up loving the neighborhood and teaching Calculus at the high school just 3 blocks from home.

I've had the astronomy bug since elementary school in Los Angeles and used to beg my parents to take me up to Griffith Park Observatory and later to buy me a telescope (they were hesitant as they figured it was a passing faze). I organized a little astronomy club with the kids on my block when I was 10 years old in 1959. The focus of the club was newspaper clippings I had collected of the early U.S. and Russian space launches as well as lectures I planned to give on the solar system and stars. I think that lasted two meetings before the kids I had corralled ran back to the schoolyard to play over-the-line baseball.

Time passed, other interests flourished and then faded (my career as a professional Frisbee player is another story) until I discovered a 60mm refractor in 1976 languishing in my girlfriend's parents' garage. After a year setting it up in an open field in Lafayette and "discovering" many of the showpieces in Sagittarius, Scorpius, Cygnus, etc. without any guides or charts (and really no idea what they were), I started a subscription to Astronomy magazine and bought a copy of Edmund's mag 5 atlas.

The small refractor was upgraded to a 6-inch reflector on an equatorial-fork mount and I was on my way systematically observing the Messiers and other showpieces in 1977. A year later I was seduced by a shiny orange C-8 with better optics and tracking, joined the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers and made it up a star party at Mt. Tamalpais where meet Bill Cherrington and had my first astonishing view of M51 through a large dobsonian.

Soon afterwards I discovered Fremont Peak and was down there as often as possible (a long drive from my home in El Cerrito) from 1979 to 1983 when some of the regulars started complaining about light pollution (yes, even then) at the Peak and I was invited to join a group meeting at Bob Kestner's property (an optician who worked on the Hubble corrective optics) in the Sierra foothills at Fiddletown. By that point I was hooked on views through larger scopes and had purchased a 13.1" Odyssey I in late 1981 and by the end of 1984 had replaced it with a 17.5-inch monster.

In the early to mid-1980's it wasn't easy obtaining information, images, and astronomical journal articles (nearly impossible in the pre-internet stone-age) so I thoroughly enjoyed heading over to the UC Berkeley Astronomy library (both on the first floor of Campbell Hall and the graduate library across the street) and comparing my observations at Fremont Peak or Fiddletown with the professional catalogues (UGC, CGCG, MCG, etc) and examining the actual Palomar Observatory Sky Survey prints which I used to pour over intently using a 10x magnifier, taking notes and making sketches of galaxy fields! I purchased several of the actual 11x14 contact prints from the Cal Tech bookstore in Pasadena which contained the fields of the Virgo Cluster, Perseus Cluster, Hercules Cluster etc. and these were by far the best finder charts available for tackling those galaxy clusters.

At the same time, I started to run across numerous errors and conflicting data in the professional and amateur literature, particularly with the fainter NGC objects and began corresponding with a couple of professional astronomers including cataloguer Harold Corwin at the University of Texas. As snail-mail evolved into e-mail and better communication with several amateurs/pros with a similar interest in historical visual astronomy, this turned into the NGC/IC Project that recently completed a historically correct revision of the entire NGC and IC.

While visually checking a number of problem identities, I decided to dive head-on into the project and tackle the entire NGC as most of the discoveries were made by William Herschel and his son John using an 18.7-inch speculum-metal mirror (similar size though less light grasp than my 18-inch Starmaster). As of this date, I've tracked down and taken notes on over 6850 NGC's (many of these observed multiple times) with about 600 to go, mostly in the southern hemisphere. My visual notes on all these objects are available on this site. I'm hoping a few more trips to the southern hemisphere will finish up most of those remaining 600.

While I was helping to sort out the NGC, I worked on correcting the databases in several computerized DSC's (digital setting circles) for Lumicon and Celestron. Later I put together the list of objects and wrote the descriptions for Orion's popular "Deep Map 600" folding star chart.

Starting in the 1980's I began contributing observing articles to the former Deep Sky magazine and later to a couple of deep sky web sites including Adventures in Deep Space (originally hosted by Jim Shields) and Ray Cash's.

Starting in 1999, I began observing articles for Sky & Telescope on topics such as observing Hickson Groups, Pisces-Perseus Supercluster, HII Regions in M101 and the Corona Borealis Galaxy Cluster as well as several articles for Astronomy Magazine on observing Supernova Remnants, Wolf-Rayet Nebulae, Winter Planetaries and more.

Over the years I've never been enticed to get involved with imaging or ATM - for me it's always been about the aesthetics at the eyepiece in a large scope, the connection with nature and the mysteries of the universe and just relaxing and hanging out with buddies under a velvet-black night sky.

Steve

(Bio pending)

Larry Mitchell of Houston, TX has had a lifelong interest in astronomy which began at age 10. He started out with a 3-inch Gilbert telescope, and would sneak out at night to record meteor showers. Around 1985, he became a serious visual astronomer, and has remained committed to the hobby ever since! He owns many telescopes, and uses them all: a 30-inch f/3.3, a 20-inch f/5, an 18-inch f/4, and a 7-inch f/9.6 Refractor. He formerly owned one of the four 36-inch f/5 Obsessions ever made, which used to be a well-known sight on the upper field of Texas Star Party.

Larry discovered supernova SN1994S, a type Ia supernova. He also manually discovered 117,300 galaxies that he compiled into the “Mitchell’s Anonymous Catalog”, or the MAC for short - found in MegaStar and also in the Catalogs section of this website. He has observed and cataloged all of Wiliam Herschel’s nebulae and star cluster discoveries. He has a book currently being published on visual observing, which has technical info and how to find obscure objects - without using a computer, as Larry always star-hops. He has written several visual astronomy articles in magazines. He is a recipient of the Texas Star Party “Lone Stargazer” award (awarded for personal accomplishment in amateur astronomy) and the “Omega Centauri” award (awarded for excellence in outreach). He was also awarded an asteroid – “126183 Larry Mitchell”

Since the year 2000, Larry has been chairman of the Texas Star Party “Advanced Observing Program”. The program aims to educate and get people to view some unusual objects with medium sized telescopes. It contains some of the finest advanced observing lists, full of obscure targets! He is also co-chairman of the Stellafane Observing Olympics, for 8 years now. He has traveled around the world giving lectures and observing the night sky, and is always ready to view the night sky and share the adventure with his many astronomy friends!

Larry's contributions to this website can be found in the infamous AINTNO catalog, which he co-created with late Barbara Wilson. The Mitchell Anonymous Catalog and the TSP Advanced Observing Program stand out amongst his other monumental contributions to the field.

(Bio pending)

(Bio pending)

Barbara Wilson of Houston, TX passed away on September 24, 2019 aged 71 after a battle with cancer that lasted several months. Many of us last saw her at the Texas Star Party 2019, an event where she was a regular fixture with a well-deserved celebrity status. After all, she pushed several frontiers in visual astronomy in the 80s and 90s. She was a prolific contributor to this website, including her articles on obscure globulars and extreme halo globulars as well as the AINTNO list. Prolific visual astronomer and her friend Dave Tosteson wrote a detailed tribute to her on Sky & Telescope's website.