Central Coast Astronomical Society

With an abundance of light, photographing the sun may seem like an extremely easy thing to do. It is this abundance of light, which includes harmful infrared and ultraviolet radiation, that presents the problems associated with solar photography. As kids, many of us experimented with a magnifying glass using it [Read More…]

Some of you probably don’t know me but I’m called Obsession #860, a truss tube Dobonian telelscope. My credentials include an18 inch f/4.5 Galaxy objective mirror with an enhanced coating and a JMI NGC MAX set of digital setting circles. I’m constructed of maple and red alder plywood. I pal [Read More…]

Greetings, after having attended a few of the wonderful star parties put on by CCAS I’ve just recently decided to become a member and was given this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Ryan, or perhaps more commonly known as “that guy over there with the Coronado PST,” and [Read More…]

I started out in amateur astronomer as a kid interested in building my own telescope. At that time, that was the way most amateurs got their scopes, especially if you were too poor to buy one. My first telescope came from the advertisement pages of Popular Mechanics magazine, when I [Read More…]

Since I couldn’t make up my mind which of the many telescopes I’ve been involved with over the last half-century was my favorite, Aurora agreed that I could write two articles: one on my past telescopes, and the other on my current telescope. Here is number one. I wasn’t born [Read More…]

I have always had an interest in astronomy and, while in junior high school, fabricated a variety of telescopes from old eyeglass lenses or any other optics I could get my hands on. My first real astronomical telescope was one I built using a 6-inch f/8 mirror that was given [Read More…]