Intros

I am Jeff Gortatowsky. I am a PROUD child of the Space Age born in 1959 in Rochester New York. As such I was a Model Rocketry nut, Astronomy nut, and all things Space nut. And I still am. As a child I recall holding a thermometer next to a light bulb and then shaking it down to a 'fever temperature' so I could stay home sick from school during space shots. Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra were my heros on the tube. To this day if you ask me what is the greatest thing mankind has ever done I'll say land on the moon, and my heros are all the original Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts as they were then. I don't know when I 'discovered' Astronomy exactly. I know it must have been sometime around 1970 when my parents bought me a 60mm refractor. My friend Greg also had one and I would go over to his house with my scope to observe side-by-side. I recall his mom driving me home at night after an 'observing session'. I recall looking at the rings of Saturn in my parents driveway in dead of winter. I did not know what shook more, the telescope or me in cold. I also was a 11 year old with a subscription to Sky and Telescope. And when Astronomy Magazine started, I subscribed to that. I dreamnt of owning a Unitron, or Cave, or Starliner telescope. I really thought a 90mm Questor could see Quasars... :) Or I had grand plans to build a 6 inch Achromat from A Jeagers. That was just over one Saturnian year ago. Saturn returned to Taurus just a few years ago. Amazing, and melancholy that so much of my life has gone by and Saturn has made it once (and them some now) around the Sun. We
 truly little temporally insignificant lives. Just few years later and many many days delivering newspapers I paid for half a RV-6 Dynascope. My Dad paid fo rthe other half. I never found much with it. Sad I know. I was convinced I had to polar align it and use the setting circles to find anything. I never quite figured it out. Then came girls, booze, and cars. High school. Astronomy and Rocketry were for weird people. Not cool. So I sold the RV-6, dropped out of high school, joined the US Air Force, and become a superb Aircraft Mechanic. Upon my return to civilian life I returned to Rochester and like my Dad took a job with Eastman Kodak. A few years later I bought Celestron C8 from Tuthill. Try as I might, I could not get past the dew and bugs during the Summer, and the cold during the Winter. Not too mention the weather itself. I dropped it about 1986. Then bought a LX5 10 inch in 1988 and tried again. Again I found the same conditions killed my interest. Being a computer nut and software engineer I tried again in around 1992 when I bought a Meade LX-200 with 747 objects in memory! But alas, Rochester killed me again. I use to observe by Sodus Bay NY. I had to wait in the truck at sunset while the bugs swarmed... In 1996 I moved to Southern CA to work for AOL in Irvine CA and a year later I found RTMC. This it the amazing conference I had read about 25 years earlier. My wife and I, Internet flush with cash, went in 1997. I observed the veil through the Yard Scope and by 1998 had talked with Jane Houston Jones and decided an 18 inch Litebox was for me. Since then, as an AOL employee I became relatively wealthy and I have owned all manner of APOs and reflectors. Now those days are GONE and I am back to just a regular "Joe". All I have left are the original 18 inch Litebox and a beloved 7 inch Teleport. Over the past 7 years I have no problem keeping my interest up as I did in Rochester. Southern CA weather is mostly clear, dry, and 'bug free'. Light pollution is the biggest challenge I face now. I am purely a visual observer and do so for the challenge, pleasure, wonder, and relaxation. Doing "visual science" has no appeal to me. Imaging to me is not appealing at all, unless done with a camera and tripod. My favorite time of year to observe is Winter as I love observing the Winter Milky Way. I adore buddy observing and my fondest memories of late are observing with my friends at star parties (CalStar and SSP). It is just a joy to observe with Paul Alsing and Debbie Searle. I can not express my fondness, admiration, and plain ole fun of observing with Charlie Wicks, and observing with Lumpy Darkness continues to be the highlight of every astronomical year. To me astronomy is a few things. First it's my friends. That is something I have only come to understand over the past few years as I attended starparties with Bill Dean. He's a wonderful friend and makes any starparty a party. Also Susan and Charlie Wicks who have taught me how important just connecting with people is. So too Michelle Stone. Same lesson. Okay enough and too long!! Astronomy is simply an extension of my childhood dreams. To me it's a grand spectacle on a even more grandiose scale. It's a journey only the mind can take and requires no PhD. There is so little to see during the day... Ha notwithstanding of course!... it's the night that offers an almost endless journey to plumb the depths of time... a journey of the mind's eye. Oui? Kapiche? --------------------------------------- Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky La Habra Heights, California "Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. " - W.C. Fields "What wretched scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?" - W.C. Fields ----- Original Message ---- From: Sarah E. <reggie_dnk_weesha@yahoo.com> To: sf-bay-tac@seds.org Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 8:32:42 PM Subject: [TAC] Member intro Page TACos, I've finished the Member Intro Page, it originally was just going to be for my own use, to help me remember who people are. It's nice to know my obsessive-compulsive organizing skills can be put to good use! http://www.adisturbedcircle.com/science/tac Let me know if you want anything changed, or added. I'll fix typos if you ask, and I can add information that you'd like. Send me a pic and I'll post it under your name! I can resize them myself if you want. If you have any suggestions to make the page easier to use/read, let me know! Thanks, hope you like it! Sarah E. Jones --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2¢/min or less. -- What TAC's Mailing List Is About - http://www.observers.org/Join.shtml To Sub-scribe or Unsub-scribe - http://seds.org/mailman/listinfo/sf-bay-tac

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