Welcome to Jarek's Amateur Astronomy Site

I have been interested in astronomy and astrophysics since my middle school days, but I wasn't observing anything until relatively recently. Observing supplements my "theoretical" interest in astronomy - it would not be so much interesting if I didn't know some about the things I see, and on the other hand seeing adds a "personal touch" to knowledge. As by profession I am a theoretician, I read about astronomy (and observing) more than I do observe (or image). You may want to check my book resources page to see interesting books I have read (no, I am not associated with Amazon in any way other than being a good long time customer).

I own five telescopes at present - one small 4.5" Dobsonian from Orion (SkyQuest 4.5), bigger 10" Dobsonian from Antares (XL10), 80mm ED Celestron refractor (C80ED - it rides on CGE1400), 14" Celestron SCT (CGE1400 XLT Fastar) and Coronado Personal Solar Telescope (PST). I also owned  a 9.25" SCT from Celestron (C9.25S-GT XLT), but I have sold it on Astromart after I bought CGE1400. Both C14 and C9.25 are great and worked very well for me so far. In Ithaca, NY I started with 4.5" Dobsonian, then moved up to 9.25" SCT, then added 80mm piggyback refractor and I was quite happy until I got aperture fever again ... That urge to have bigger and bigger and bigger telescope! I bet you know it very well :-). I had to buy 14" SCT, and so I did, and I am very happy with it. CGE1400 is a great scope, wonderful optics, excellent mount! It performs very well for visual, with good pointing accuracy. Many say that C14+C80ED would be too heavy for CGE mount for astrophotography, but for me it works very well in this aspect too.  Coronado PST opened a new area of Solar observing for me, it is a fantastic little scope.

I am interested in both visual observing as well as digital photography, for which I first acquired Meade's Deep Sky Imager (DSI). It is a nice little CCD camera, very easy to use. I used it some, but then I didn't have much time to pursue CCD since Fall'05. It all changed in the Spring of 2007. My wife Ewa got Canon Digital Rebel XTi for Christmas 2006: she uses it for daytime photography, I use it at night :-). Since then I upgraded to Hutech modified Canon 40D. I post my photos in the "Astrophotography" section, there are quite a few accumulated there already. For me both sides of the hobby are important, I like visual observing, but I also like photographing, and it is always very difficult to decide what to do on any particular clear night.

I am pretty lucky to live in a place where light pollution is not severe, I can observe from my backyard's deck, and on a good night limiting magnitude is around 5.5 (depending on where I look, worst part low in the west is probably ~4.0). A drawback of my backyard observing is my field of view - there are trees around, and my declination limit is about -18deg (and I need good timing to use this opening!). There is a dark site (Mount Pleasant) not far from my house, but due to time limitations I am not going there very often. CGE1400 takes a bit too long to assemble/disassemble for my present schedule, so I am thinking about medium-size DOB (16") for more frequent dark site trips.

I have set up my personal page with information about expected cloud coverage for Ithaca, NY (based on NOAA) with Sun and Moon data (from U.S. Naval Observatory). You can find it here. I have also made an overlay of light pollution map on Virtual Earth covering Upstate NY and Northern Pennsylvania. This map is also available as a regular Live Maps collection