Astronomical League Certificates

Double Star Club Certificate
The Astronomical League

I completed this project on 13 June 1995 using a 10" Meade LX 200 telescope for the entire list. Of all the Astronomical League observing projects, I have to say I enjoyed this one the most. Double star observing holds a special fascination for me, especially with a high end refractor showing a textbook "airy disc and diffraction ring pattern" against a jet-black background.
Highly color contrasted doubles are true gems of the night sky.

Click here to see an example of the data sheet I developed and used for the
Double Star Project.

Binocular Messier Club Certificate
The Astronomical League

This project was completed on 30 March 1999 using a pair of modestly priced Orion UltraView 10 x 50 binoculars. I found this project to be a relaxing one because of it's low tech nature; just the observer, a pair of binoculars and a star chart under starry skies. Of the 55 objects observed, 35 were in Category 1 (easy), 12 were in Category 2 (Tougher), and 8 were in Category 3 (Challenge). To make the Category 1 objects more challenging I observed them all from a moderately light polluted site in the San Gabriel Mountains just north of Los Angeles.
The Category 3 objects were all observed from a dark sky site in the Arizona desert
and were pretty tough with the Orion UltraViews!

Honorary Messier Club Certificate
The Astronomical League

It was a real pleasure to complete the entire Messier list with my old orange tube Celestron C14. Marveling at the beauty and intricacy of this list's assortment of outstanding objects through a large aperture telescope made a deep-sky fan out of me. If only Charles Messier knew what he was missing! This project required 8 full nights out under the stars over a 6 month period to complete from 21 November 1998 to 19 May 1999. Most of the observations were done from a very dark sky site in the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range in Southern Arizona.

Click here to see an example of the data sheet I developed and used for the
Messier Project.

Herschel 400 Club Certificate
The Astronomical League

Wow, what a chore to complete! Using my C14 definitely made this project a little easier, but I must admit that many of the objects on this list had very little detail to them even with this large aperture telescope. From start to finish this one took 1 year and 9 months to complete. Again, most of the objects were necessarily observed from dark sky sites in Arizona, Nevada and California. This list taught me patience at the eyepiece and a keener ability to flush out
the faint detail found in the ubiquitous "faint fuzzies" of deep space.

Click here to see an example of the data sheet I developed and used for the
Herschel 400 Project.