Author Archives: Jim Lawrence

I first got hooked onto astronomy in 1956 when a priest/professor let us look at the moon through his refractor telescope. That's all it took, at least for a while. I soon got involved in work, marrying, raising a family and astronomy took a back seat for a lot of years, but I still had the bug and my work for a NASA sub contractor on all the moon mission programs didn't help. Then I finally moved to Colorado Springs and a friend gave me a 6 inch reflector and I was off and running again and didn't look back. I am now retired and am really ready to get back into the hobby. I currently own a Coulter 8 inch f/4.5 Odyssey dobsonian reflector. It is close to 25-30 years old and still performs well. It is equipped with digital setting circles I installed myself, an Orion SkyWizard 3 for tracking. I also designed and built an equatorial platform. I eventually want to replace the SkyWizard with a Sky Commander DSC computer so I can interface it to tracking software. I have an Acer 10 inch tablet/laptop running Skytools 3 and various other programs that I can use at the scope. I can also run SkySafari+ on my Samsung 10 inch tablet. I mainly observe in my backyard in northern Colorado Springs. I figure the NLM is around 5.1-5.5, so it's not too bad for observing.

Clear Skies Observing Guides

Web site that lets you download images geared for your equipment

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http://www.clearskies.eu/

A few weeks back, I was searching for places that let you view astro images from sites like DSS and came across a web site called “Clear Skies Observing Guides”.  It turned out to be a really neat place.  It contains DSS images in zipped files of images from the Messier, Caldwell, Stock, Palomar and other catalogs that I never heard of like Dolidze, and Holmberg.  What is really neat about them is that they come in different editions that you can download depending on the kind of scope you own and the images will orient as they would in your particular scope.  The editions are for 5-6″ scopes, 8-10″, and 12″ scopes.  In addition, the orientations are: unmirrored, mirrored horizontally, mirrored vertically and mirrored horizontally and vertically.  There are also editions that cover all of the constellations.Continue reading “Clear Skies Observing Guides”