I talk to roughly 150 people a week about space, the sky, astronomy and some of the really cool things going on "up there" through my public stargazes at the Marriott VacationClub properties here on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

I put this site together to provide a centralized resource for people getting started in amateur astronomy to hear about many different facets of this rewarding hobby, from the ‘nuts and bolts’ aspect of it regarding equipment selection to advice on what to look at and how to observe better and appreciate what you observe more.

What's On Here?

Frequently Asked Questions

My stargazes are informal events where we stand around and talk about things having to do with space, the sky etc. and often people will ask me questions about something they've heard in the news recently or some fact about the sky and constellations they'd like clarified which results in me hearing many of the same questions every week. I'm not really bothered by this because it gives me a sense of what kind of things people know and care about when you're just a "normal" person and not focused on this stuff the way I am. Many of these common questions are addressed in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) part of the site, hopefully in better clarity and detail than I can manage during a public stargaze.

My Scope

To get you familiar with what kind of equipment is out there and how to go about selecting what's right for you, I have written up a complete history of the thirty years I've had my scope and talk about what accessories I bought and why I bought them, what challenges were presented to me by my gear and what my solution ended up being to those problems.

What to Look At

One of the early hurdles I had to overcome was to pick things to look at that were both within the reach of my instrument but also were rewarding visually as well since I had to find them all manually ‘back in the day’ before computer controlled scopes were common. I have gone through and selected a few of the really choice ‘must see’ objects, provided finder charts and background information on the objects to get you started.

Astroblog

I keep a blog that I post to whenever something significant happens with either my astrophotos, my equipment setup, an event I'm involved in or some piece of news I want to comment on.

Photos

I'm going to feature a gallery of my ongoing (and recently renewed) fascination with Astrophotography, and would be happy to post any photos contributed by my visitors. I have joined the computer age and recently purchased a digital CCD camera and auto-guiding software so hopefully this new chapter in trying to photograph galaxies and nebulae will be the fruition of 30 years of off and on half successes and a few lucky accidents!

Other Resources

I also have a page full of links to various online resources for a variety of things ranging from educational, to equipment vendors to software publishers of space and science programs.

Search the Sky Guy Site

My ‘Space Music’ Playlist

This is my playlist of songs that have to do with the Moon, Sun, planets, space, time, astronomy, paticle physics (who writes music about particle physics???) or music that's just spacey!

I play this list at all my public stargazes and even absent the spacey organizational scheme, it's an eclectic batch of great music ranging from Sinatra to the Red Hot Chili Peppers!

Scroll and double click on a song to play…
You can visit the public playlist on Spotify itself on this link

How to Observe a
Meteor Shower!

SkyGuy News

New Moonlite focuser on the observatory refractor

I recently completely replaced the focuser and focus motor on the AstroTech 6-inch refractor installed at the observatory. It has really made a huge difference!

• I am still available for private stargazes with the 18-inch in diameter scope if you’d like to do that.

New Observatory: operational!

Huge News! The Observatory “went live” more or less in mid-November 2021 and has been turning out some good photos while I work on getting my methods and procedures together so i can use it effectively from home.

Click here to read more about the project.

Two Astrophoto Blog Posts

I got two blog posts out recently, both about astrophotos. The most recent one is a very gratifying success with a photo of the Crab Nebula, a target that has vexed me for decades. Click here to see the post.

Ten days earlier I had the scope out thinking I’d shoot something but the Moon was so bright I couldn't see anything so I thought I’d shoot it as a “target of last resort”. Well the image came out great so I did a post with some closeups and even tracked down all the Apollo landing sites.
Click here to see the Moon post

Quarantine Astrophotography

Well the really bizarre circumstances surrounding the Covid19 Pandemic has canceled all my work and we are ‘encouraged’ to stay home.
I’ve been figuring out how to take some photos from my porch here at home;
so I wrote a blog post about the whole thing.

Total Solar Eclipse 2017:

Monday, August 21st was the "Great American Eclipse" as they were calling it. I traveled to Columbia SC to be on the centerline and was blessed with perfect weather. I took over 4000 photos and wrote a blog post and put together a video.

I also added a number of eclipse photos to the astrophotography gallery along with some new deep-sky shots.

New TeleScope is a winner!

The new eighteen inch diameter ‘Obsession’ (very apt brand name) telescope has been in service for a couple of years now and I can say that it has exceeded my expectations in almost every way. We're seeing detail in galaxies that are 12 million light years away or more, globular clusters that are breathtakingly big and bright and dim nebulas are much more well defined.
I’m very grateful for the aftermarket GoTo/Tracking motor package called ‘StellarCAT’ by RX Designs–game changer for large Dobsonians