Thank you for visiting my site and I’m hopeful you’ll find it interesting.  

       

6-inch f/6 Newtonian which is now becoming my favorite telescope, due to the smaller size and weight.  

My most used telescopes as following:

The following Celestron 4.5-inch Newtonian was a gift to me by a friend. Libby called me one afternoon and asked if I could find a new home for this telescope. So, I went to pick it up and did a serious evaluation, and decided that it would make a good edition to my current telescope inventory. The telescope was in pristine condition…how could I turn it down? And It’s compact, fairly light and very easy to set up on a Vixen GP mount. If I want to attempt to some very faint threshold deep-sky objects, I can use the following CGE-Pro Celestrom GoTo mount.

102 mm Vixen/Orion refractor. I purchased this telescope in 1997 and was a bit surprised how large and heavy this f/10 telescope was.

The following 80mm f/5 refractor was a gift to me by my son Brad, living in Las Vegas. My most portable telescope.

My other hobby: Still riding a bicycle as of current with about 135,000 miles since June 1979. However, it took me 29 years to log 100,000 miles in October 2009. I continue to ride even to this day, but not as fast or as many miles.

Another interest or hobby of mine for the past 50 years (as of 2025) is lifting weights. And for the past 10 years with my wife. Good health is the most important thing you have in life. It’s not your money, not your house, not cars or any other tangible thing. We can only “try our best” to take care of our health by eating a healthy diet combined with regular physical exercise

A few examples of my pencil sketches as following, which are made at the eyepiece without any embellishments or computer enhancements.

As following: A good illustration how faint the Helix Nebula appears via a 10-inch Newtonian with a nebulae filter. This planetary appears nothing like a beautiful time lapse, colorful, filter enhanced digital image. A chalk and black card stock sketch was best used to present the true appearance of an eyepiece view of the Helix.

I’ve never used a computer or any other electronic means to enhance or embellish my visual eyepiece sketches.

Orion nebula: I’ve always felt there is just too much fine detail to properly sketch this famous nebula. The following sketch was made pretty fast, attempted to only draw the most prominent features. Each and every time I’d turn my telescope(s) toward the nebulae to attempt my best ever sketch….I’d become overwhelmed, and would move on to other deep-sky objects.

Hale-Bopp with the anti-tail, gas and dust tails easily seen with a 10-inch Newtonian: Chalk on black card stock, worked best for the famous comet.