AMATEUR ASTRONOMY

by Lynn Conway

 

Copyright @ 2000-2003, Lynn Conway

All Rights Reserved

 

 

We live on 23 acres in a rural area of Michigan, and are fortunate to have fairly dark skies at night. On occasional really clear nights we enjoy informal observing of the sky with our Quantum-6 and Meade ETX telescopes, and we enjoy sharing our dark skies and telescopes with friends.

 

The late 1990's were particularly interesting for visual observers, with the appearance of the bright Comet Hyakutake in 1996, the very bright Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, and the occurance of a total eclipse of the sun in the Caribbean in 1998. Some photos of those events follow below.

 

 

For some background on amateur astronomy, see the Sky and Telescope website.

 

 

 

Comet Hyakutake in 1996:

A photo from our property in rural Michigan

 

 

 

 Comet Hale-Bopp:

A photo from our property in rural Michigan at 0130 UT on April 1, 1997

90mm, f/2.5 lens; exposure of 16sec., using ASA400 film

 

 

 

 

Total Eclipse of the Sun:

Photo taken from HollandAmerica's MS Statendam

Near Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles

26 February 1998