Journeys
This contains hikes I have been on. It is not meant to show anything dramatic or startling, just a repository of memories for me and my friends
Observations
My first telescope was from my Grandparents who gave me one of those department store style scopes for Christmas in 1966. The optics were ok, but after a few years one of the legs eventually broke from what I suspect was metal fatigue. There was a long hiatus until the mid-1992 when a friend offered to sell me his Celestron C8 Classic in about 1994. This machine was used quite extensively and gave several nice views of deep space objects, planets, and the moon. His success with astro-photography rekindled my interests in imaging. My long range goal was to start taking photographs with my trusty Minolta XG-1. However, I never had the sort of sky darkness i needed to take really good images. And progress began to rear its head. In other words, the digital revolution had arrived.
Soon after moving to the the San Francisco Bay area in 1999, I purchased a CCD camera cookbook kit with the goal of taking digital pictures. This was rather fun to build, but I soon realized that much better CCD cameras were coming on the market and my model was rapidly becoming obsolete. While I still have it, it has not be used except to confirm it can take images during the test phase. I have purchased several cameras and telescopes, as well as built an observatory.
Nature
This weather station is privately owned and operated at a private residence in Castro Valley, CA. Please do not base any important decisions that may impact life or property using data presented in this section.
Additional Credits
The following inspired and provided the thumbnails used on the main homepage
thoughts The Thinker, Auguste Rodin, (1904)
journeys Found in the public domain
observations Janet Leigh in Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, (1960)
nature Found in the public domain