Welcome to my universe, and thank you for visiting my web site.  It's here rather more to help than just to show off.  I believe everyone has a purpose - even if it's only to be a bad example!  I try to be a good example.  I believe that there are absolutes of good and bad, right and wrong, and that the arbitrator of these is God.  I believe knowledge is a thing to be shared, and this web site is my latest humble attempt to do this.

    I'm about a Jedi Master level amateur astronomer, and so I'll start out with the astronomy stuff.  I'm a child of the Space Age, and my interest began very young. I remember getting up early to watch the Apollo launches, Walter Cronkite playing with spacecraft models, and the live drama of Apollo 13. The earliest memories I have of watching the stars is seeing Orion through the window of my parent's car with Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps, & Theives" playing on the radio. The Merrillville, Indiana school system where I was educated for all but one year built a planetarium in 1973 at Pierce Middle Schoool. This was about the time that Merrillville incorporated as a town, and the famous Southlake Mall was built there. Classes in the planetarium were mandatory for all Merrillville students, and I was facinated by the technology of the planetarium. I was seriously interested in astronomy, and my parents bought me a pair of 10x50 binoculars and the full color version of the Skalnate Pleso Atlas of the Heavens. I surveyed literally everything in site from our home, which at that time had decent observing circumstances. After learning the constellations and hundreds of deep sky objects, I wanted a telescope. But not just any telescope. I wanted the largest, most powerful telescope ever to look at the sky over Merrillville, Indiana. Unfortunately, that one was a bit too expensive to buy on my part time grocery bagging salary at Wise Way.  So, by necessity, I became an ATM (Amateur Telescope Maker - nobody had debit cards in 1979!). I read all I could about building telescopes - my primary references were "Newtonian Notes" (still the best design book I've seen, even 30 years later), and Scientific American's Amateur Telescope Making Vol. 1,2, &3. I determined I had a budget of about $400, and calculated the biggest telescope I could build would be a 10". I designed out what I wanted, a 10" f/4.1 Newtonian reflector, and contracted Richard Fagin of Chicago to make the mirror. My father and uncle helped me to make the pipe fitting German equatorial  mount for the telescope. It used 2" pipe fittings with 1" diameter stainless steel ground rod shafts. My father obtained several pounds of babbit from a scrapped bearing, and we melted this down and cast it around the shafts in the pipe fittings for our telescope mount bearings. My uncle made four legs for the mount that were fromed heavy gauge sheet steel and a 4" square box steel piece was the pier. It was all modular, being held together by 3/8" bolts and really heavy. But it worked pretty good!  I ordered the rest of the scope parts - mirror cell, secondary mirror, spider, & 2" focuser from Kenneth Novak & Co. in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. Richard delivered the mirror, and we put it all together. It worked awesomely!  At the age of 16, in 1979, I had just built and used the largest, most powerful telescope ever to look at the sky over Merrillville, Indiana! 

I found and joined up with a small group of local amateur astronomers - the Calumet Astronomical Society. Members of CAS, particularly Doug Simmons and Jerry Kisiel, helped me out by giving me rides and good advice. CAS in the 70's & 80's was a small social organization, with our meeting programs being either the latest NASA video, or slides that one of our members had taken on his "astro-vacation".  My good friend Michael Thomae and myself went on a trip to Union Grove, Wisconsin, to be at the second "Astrofest" being held at the Racine Astronomical Society's Modine-Benstead Observatory. It rained almost the entire weekend. We literally fought the mud - and the mud won!  I quickly rose through the "ranks" of CAS and was elected vice president of observing in 1982 at the age of 18, the youngest person ever to be an officer in that organization. In August that year, I went with Jerry Kisiel on a trip out to Peasley's Farm - a farm house in western Illinois that friends of his periodically rented to hold a small "star party" at. I don't remember exactly where it was, but the skies there at the time were roughly equivalent to today's Nebraska Star Party. Although we had some neighbors with local lights, the skies at my parent's house were decent, about the same level as CAS' Birdland site today. In 1983, I was elected CAS president. During 1983-84, I did the club newsletter with the help of my friend Alonzo Villarreal. I also started a relationship between CAS and the planetarium in Merrillville that continues to this day in the form of an annual holiday meeting at the planetarium each December.

About Chris

In June 1984 I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I enjoyed some very nice observing experiences, especially with Mike and Elizabeth Peck of the Albuquerque Astronomical Society. I joined the Army in November 1984, where I had a couple of notable experiences, including viewing from Sunrise Point in Mt. Ranier National Park, and photographing Halley's Comet from the Tacoma Astronomical Society's observatory in Pullyalup, Washington. When I returned to Northwest Indiana in 1988, I found that the increased light pollution there and comparison to my experiences out west made astronomical viewing very unsatisfying. I rejoined the CAS, but between lousy observing and internal politics at the time I lost interest. Astronomy went on the back burner during the early and mid 1990's while I worked full time for the Illinois National Guard, went to college, and played keyboards in various rock bands. In 1997, I learned of an event called the Nebraska Star Party. They claimed that the skies at this event were so dark that you could see 7th magnitude stars with the unaided eye. I was intrigued, so I got the old 10" out, did a complete rebuild including a composite fork mount, and took this telescope to NSP in 1998. I was very impressed, and my telescope took first place in their telescope making competition. While I was there, I saw a number of gigantic "truss dob" telescopes - up to 30" in aperture, and I resolved to get one of these for my own. in 1999, I ordered a new Discovery 17.5TD telescope. I took an extended vacation that summer and drove to Oceanside, California to pick this telescope up. Being the ATM that I am, I took along a Tech 2000 Dob Driver - a device to make the altaz mount track in an equatorial manner - and installed it right at the Discovery factory.  I stopped at the Weekend Under the Stars in Wyoming, and the Nebraska Star Party on the way home. I had tremendous observing experiences with this telescope on this trip, and there were many oos and aahs from my fellow astronomers over the new model "budget" truss dob. This telescope was optically excellent, and its "triple enhanced" mirror coating was mechanically the toughest one I have had on any telescope.  I highly recommend it. I owned this telescope through 2004, and highly modified it. I used a unique off axis counterweight system, and mounted a 4.7" f/5 refractor on it as a "super finder". I also made a "whale tail" accessory table that went on the rear of the telescope. This was a unique and very effective telescope that, used in the light pollution of northwest Indiana, put me back on a par with where I was with a 10" in 1984.

In 1998, I rejoined CAS and quickly moved into the leadership ranks. I established a relationship with Indiana Dunes State Park where we did regular observing at. I installed a photovoltaic electrical system in the Roesel Observatory at Birdland. I had heard a rumor about a very large telescope that had fallen into disrepair in Michigan, and took a trip up there to check it out. The Shoreline Amateur Astronomy Association in Holland, Michigan had used this telescope for a number of years until one of their members bought a new 20" Obsession, at which time they abandoned use of the old telescope. I found it on a cart in a garage under a pile of junk at the Vivekanadu Monestary in Ganges, Michigan. They told me there that if I could get it out and have the public looking through it, I could have it! I went home,got my van and some help, and came home with a free 22" telescope. This was the famed John Dobson original 22" f/7.1 Longeye Telescope, which had seen use in the 1980's with the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers. After some restoration and modernization work, this telescope saw service at CAS public events through 2005. In January 2000, I received a phone call from Indiana Dunes State Park Naturalist Wendy Smith - She asked, if they were to have an observatory at Dunes State Park, would CAS be interested in using it? I of course said yes, and this led to my involvement in the highly successful Thomas Conway Observatory Project. I attended many star parties across the country during 1998 through 2005, including MARS (Colorado), Weekend Under the Stars (Wyoming), Nebraska Star Party, Wisconsin Observer's Weekend, AstroFest (Illinois), NIAGfest (Indiana), NEAF (New York), Cedar Key Star Party (Florida), Orange Blossom Special Star Party (Florida), and the Winter Star Party (Florida).

Local Telescope retailer Dr. Wes Molenaar asked me to help him at a couple of his AstroFest displays. This led to our taking a trip to Tucson, Arizona in October 2003 for the Hands on the Sun Conference, and a six week road trip in January/February 2004 that we called "The Winter Sun Tour". During this trip we went to three star parties and I was the speaker at astronomy club meetings all over Florida. Wes asked me to join him as a partner in the business, and so I became co-owner of 20/20 Telescopes & Binoculars. At the beginning of 2007, I bought Wes out and became sole owner. The devastating recession of 2008 wiped 20/20 out, and it closed its doors in October 2008. As I was doing more and more public outreach type work during this time, and seeing how I was now a Meade Dealer, I sold my 17.5" and bought a new 14" LX200GPS, which had just been introduced. The combination of big aperture, a convenient focus location, and go to and track operation made this telescope ideal for this type of work. Unlike a fair number of Meade products, I have nothing but praise for this model. It is one of the very best commercial telescopes of all time - a classic. In 2006, Meade introduced their RCX400 series. After a critical shootout between my 14" and a 12" RCX400, I was convinced that the 14" was now "obsolete". I sold it to Kip Hoffman of Wisconsin, who still uses and loves it to this day. I used whatever was lying around the store until June 2007, when I purchased a new Obsession 25".  With it's ServoCat Drive and ArgoNavis Setting Circles, this is indeed an ultimate visual astronomy telescope. In March 2006, I purchased a home in Beaver City, Indiana - about 60 miles south of where I worked in Gary.

I had always "putzed" around with astrophotography, but with the advent of digital SLR cameras I decided the time had come to get a bit more serious about it. Beginning witha Canon Digital Rebel in 2005, I started taking pictures and soon had an astrophotography specific telescope. It's a work in progress, as most of them are, and currently it consists of an Orion Atlas EQ-G mount on a permanent pier, an Orion 120ED f/7.5 refractor, and a Televue TV-60is. The mount is operated direct by a PC with EQMOD. This is in my opinion the very best mount setup to be had for under $5000. The 120ED is optically excellent, and with the stock tailpiece and focuser replaced with a Digital FeatherTouch, it has mechanicals to match. FocusMax in conjunction with Maxim DL allows automated focusing. The TV-60is is simply the very best 60mm telescope to be had, period. These telescopes work well on medium to large extended objects. For cameras I use the Orion Starshoot Pro CCD, and the Starshoot autoguider. These both work well. I also have but don't use very much a Canon 20Da camera and an SBIG ST-237. All of this is housed in a 6' x 8' "SkyShed" roll off roof observatory in my yard. I have sucessfully remote operated the equipment in the observatory via a wireless LAN from my house - but it is not truly robotic capable.

As I have enjoyed attending many star parties over the years, and there was no longer a star party in the Chicago region that truly catered to no compromise observers, I sponsored the EPOCH 2007, EPOCH 2008, and NIAGfest 2009 star parties near where I live in Beaver City. These events were innovative and highly enjoyable, but the economic environment of recent years made it impossible to continue them. More successful was the MidWest AstroImaging Conference I sponsored in 2007. This event has grown and was highly successful in 2008 and 2009 under the leadership of Al Degutis.

Currently, I take pictures when I can, help out with construction and maintenance of about 10 observatories, and do what I can to promote the hobby. I'm blessed to live in a place relatively free of light pollution, and share it as much as I can.