CygnusXT10

  • Member since May 2010
  • 473 contributed posts
About CygnusXT10

Hi, I'm Roger. I was born in 1960 and I'm a happily married family man from northwestern Pennsylvania. I became interested in astronomy as a youth for three reasons. I have an inquisitive mind, I had great views of the Milky Way growing up in the country and I saw the first man land on the Moon when I was nine. I didn't really get into it heavily until the late 90s when I got a blue collar job at a local university and befriended the long time astronomy professor there. He lent me a telescope in return for me helping at the university's two observatories, working with a 16 inch Celestron and a 20 inch Torus. Here are the top 20 best memories of my astronomy experiences since then, in chronological order. 1) The first night I ever found M31 was also the first time I'd ever seen a true fireball. It was only a few degrees from M31! 2) My first view of the "Virgo 7" was mind boggling! (M86, M84, NGCs 4438, 4435, 4388, 4387, 4402) 3) My first star party was on 8-14-99. 4) I got my favorite telescope on 1-3-01, my beloved Orion SkyQuest XT10. 5) I had my first letter to the editor in "Astronomy" magazine in 2001. 6) Completed the Messier list for the first time. 7) Located my 100th galaxy. 8) Meteor storm 11-17-01 9) Made my first appearence as an astronomy guest speaker in a middle school. 10) Started a monthy astronomy column in a local newspaper. 11) On 5-27-03, I finally located Quasar 273 with my 10 inch after several attempts. 12) At a 2003 star party I observed dozens of objects through a 30 inch Dob. 13) The best northern lights display I ever saw was on 10-30-03. 14) I talked in great length to Phil Harrington at star parties in 2003 and 2004. What a great guy! 15) Read my 100th cosmolgy book. I even understood some of them! 16) I wrote a children's book called "Restless Rebecca" about the adventures of a photon who sets off to travel the Universe. Unfortunately, it's never been published. 17) My grandson got his first view through a telescope on 5-20-06. He observed Jupiter. 18) I sat two seats away from Nobel Prize winner John Mather at a dinner. 19) On 3-13-09 I observed an amazing sight. I saw a satellite with my naked eyes and then picked it up in my Orion Ultra View 10x50 binoculars when I saw another one traveling beside it. I followed them with the binos and the next thing you know, they flew right into the path of M31 where there just happened to be two airplanes! What a lucky and amazing sight.....and one that didn't last long! 20) I saved the best for last.....I started on the "Astronomy" magazine forums on 5-28-10.

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