Introduction

As a young child, I was always interested and even enthralled in Astronomy. My childhood room was decorated with rocket ships and space shuttle models, pictures and books of the celestial heavens above. As a young teenager, I owned my first telescope: I believe it was an inexpensive refractor with maybe a 3” aperture; really only good to view the moon and a few planets. Yet, never disappointed, I pointed that little telescope all over the heavens looking for shooting stars, satellites and distinctions in star color.

In college, I took courses in Astronomy including Beginning Astronomy, Advanced Astronomy and also an Observational Astronomy lab all of which continued to fuel my appetite. Later in college I began experimenting with primitive astrophotography, taking short exposures of planets, the moon and an occasional lunar eclipse.

Now, in the present, after marriage and child, my love for Astronomy has been rekindled. It took a recent camping trip up in central Wisconsin to bring my interest back full circle. One of our camping companions hauled his impressive 10” homemade telescope to the campsite. Despite a rather hazy and overcast couple of nights, the views of Jupiter were amazing. We looked at a binary star system and peeked in at the Pleiades Star Cluster. I was hooked again.

For really no ones pleasure but mine, I introduce The Celestial Chronicle; An Amateur Observational Astronomy Journal. My goal is to begin slowly cataloging the many amazing objects that reveal themselves in the night sky including celestial bodies to deep space objects.