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Hello all! My name is Johnny Irvin and I have been interested inastronomy since I received my first telescope when I was 10 years old. That was 50 years ago. It was a simple Alt-Az Sears and Robuck 90mm refractor. There was no internet then, only the town library with a few books on astronomy and star maps were not common. For years I just wondered aimlessly discovering things on my own not having any idea what I was looking at. I remember when I first found Saturn. I was so excited I went rushing into the house announcing my big discovery! It was just a white ball with a solid white ring, but it was one of the most exciting times in my young life with a telescope. All these years later I still remember the feeling of those first chance discoveries as a young boy. Throughout the next few decades I was not able to do a lot of observing between spending 20 years in the Navy, collage and reestablishing myself into the business world after retiring from said Navy. I did keep up on the science around astronomy and all the discoveries being made. My observations were limited to binoculars and I spent many a night in the California deserts during those years looking up at the sky during family camping trips. My fondest memory from then was the weekend my we were in the desert camping and there were a group of people up on a nearby ridge all lined up with Binoculars looking up at the sky. I grabbed by binos, modest 9X50 of some brand that I do not remember and went to join them. Somehow, I had missed the news of Halley’s Comet being most visible that weekend. Fortune and chance had placed us in the desert that night and we got to see one of the best wonders to see in the night sky. 22 years ago, I retired from the navy and settled back in my native Texas here in Round Rock. In all these years I have been through quite the journey using various telescopes and mounts. I started video Astronomy back when we were modifying PC web cameras to fit as eye pieces. I have since then went through several different models and makes. I modified an old Samsung Security camera if anyone remembers SDC-435. I used the Stellacam 2 and 3 (which I still have), Astro-video cams and now I have a modern outstanding video designed from the ground up for Astro video use. Today I use the Atik Infinity camera. It is an outstanding device that gives me near real time views of just about anything I want to see. This of course also depends on the telescope you are using. Today I use two telescopes depending on what I wish tosee. I have a 120mm fast refractor for wide fields and I am soon (hopefully) receiving Orion’s new 8” classical Cassegrain. I use two different mounts for the telescopes. I have Orion’s Atlas Pro and iOptron’s MiniTower II. With the Atik Infinity software, stacking and auto rotation correction only needs Alt-Az. This makes for a quick setup and imaging. I also have a Skywatcher Star Adventurer that I do DSLR imaging. This I take on our camping trips and get some amazing wide field photos. I also designed some adaptors to mount the Atik Infinity to my Canon Lenses which I also use with the Star Adventurer. We now have a place to where we will retire in the future that is in West Texas. The sky there is very dark. One summer night a few years ago I had setup to do some imaging and was in the house waiting to start. My grandson came into the house and said that imaging would not be possible due to the clouds that moved in. I went outside looked up and told him “Grandson, those are stars. That is the milky way. The galaxy we live in." He had never seen the night sky with the clarity we have there. Sorry for the verboseness of this introduction. I look forward to sharing my experiences and gleaming all the experiences this group has to offer. Clear Skies, Johnny Irvin |
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Hi Johnny, welcome here, glad you (and your interesting story) found us :-) CS from germany, Michael |
