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Greetings From Northern Vermont

BVietje

By BVietje
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BVietje

BVietje

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Hi All,

I'm sure I joined SGL at some point in the hazy, distant past, but I don't remember the details, so I registered anew today.

Long time amateur astronomer and amateur telescope maker, I now get to play -- and sometimes even for pay -- at a small observatory in Northeastern VT that was built to support science education in rural New England and beyond (www.nkaf.org).   We work with a few dozen schools, mostly high schools and a few middle schools, and we are sometimes used as a laboratory for college Astronomy & Physics classes if the institution does not have their own observatory.

I handle outreach activities, train teachers, and mostly play chief telescope operator, helping teachers and their students get the images and data they need.

At home, I play with an 8"f/5.9 dobsonian with my own mirror inside, and an 8"f/7 Dob with an old Parks mirror, along with a host of other doo-dads.  At the Northern Skies Observatory I am privledged to have access to a very nice Planewave CDK-17 with an Apogee Alta U16M camera and a 10-position filter wheel on an awesome custom mount.  We have remote and robotic capibility, so i can operate the scope from home, or I can operate it from on-site with student groups, etc...

I'm a longtime telescope geek, with 30-year+ ties to Stellafane, about an hour drive south of here, and participate in 2 other clubs occasionally.  I do lots of deep-sky photography, a little variable star photometry, H-alpha solar photography (Lunt 80mm single stack), and have been having fun learning about spectroscopy with a Star Analyzer-200 in the filter wheel at the observatory, and an SA-100 to mate up with other cameras and lenses.

I never thought I'd be getting into digital astronomy in such a big way (having spent years star-hopping), but it gets COLD here, and getting spectra or deep images on below-zero (F) nights while sitting indoors in comfort sure does have an up side!

Clear skies,

Brad Vietje

Northern Vermont, USApost-43455-0-35593800-1427323565.jpg

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mattyk-usa

mattyk-usa

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Brad,

I'm certainly looking forward to your contributions, that's some background!  There's just one issue, and I hesitate to bring it up...

...but That picture you have displayed there, of Northern Vermont, USA?  Well, I'm afraid that it's actually... The Sun.   The Sun, Brad!  Perhaps the diametric opposite of Northern Vermont in early Spring, if there is one.  You have some research to do, my good man!t

:p

I just had to.  :tongue:   

Welcome, again!  Hope to learn a lot from you.

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BVietje

BVietje

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@Mattyk-usa:  we get to peek at the sun a bit, but we don't actually get to play in it much !  :laugh:

+6F yesterday morning, almost 2 feet of snow on the ground, nearly 50F and rain today (lost quite a bit of snow), back to the single digits tomorrow night.  That's Northern New England in late March.

Need to cool the camera to -30C because in winter it can easily be colder than -20 in the dome, and the temps keep falling through the night.  THAT's VT in winter :grin:

Clear skies,

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BVietje

BVietje

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@Purdo:  I don't usually get to take long integrations of deep-sky objects like the real deep imagers do - see Sara Wager and Robert Gentler, for example -- wow!  I help run a small observatory with lots of students making 2x300 sec LRGB images, so getting even 60 min in each filter is rare, but I'm hoping to get some deeper images sometime soon.

Clear skies,

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mattyk-usa

mattyk-usa

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@Mattyk-usa:  we get to peek at the sun a bit, but we don't actually get to play in it much !  :laugh:

+6F yesterday morning, almost 2 feet of snow on the ground, nearly 50F and rain today (lost quite a bit of snow), back to the single digits tomorrow night.  That's Northern New England in late March.

Need to cool the camera to -30C because in winter it can easily be colder than -20 in the dome, and the temps keep falling through the night.  THAT's VT in winter :grin:

Clear skies,

Brad,

I have (crazy for living there in Winter) family in Brattleboro, so I do get that your weather patterns are mild in general.  At least, compared to the Arctic tundra! :)

Clear skies!

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