Mark Hanson

Back in the early 1990s I was asked to look up at the stars; at a few points of light. Then I was told that if you look at that point of light through a telescope, you would see thousands of points of light and if you zoomed in closer you would see thousands more. That little experience got me started in astronomy.

 

Soon after that I bought my first telescope. It was an 8" Dob. I knew after 4-5 viewing sessions that I needed to see more. I built many gadgets for it including a tracking mount.  I used duct tape to attach my camera (an SLR back then) and off I went on my astrophotography journey.  I could not get enough. I joined the local astronomy club in Madison, Wisconsin, the Madison Astronomical Society, where I met a great group of people, most notably Dr. R. A. Greiner (Doc G), Greg Sellek and Matt Mills. We imaged and looked for asteroids from the Yanna Research Station (YRS) which is the dark sky site for the Madison Astronomical Society. Doc G had built two nice observatories for them and donated two 12-inch go-to scopes.

 

By now I had moved on to Canon DSLR cameras for imaging. At the time this was a relatively new field in astrophotography. We had CCDs and SLRs, but for digital cameras it was just the beginning.  I took many DSLR images from YRS and Doc constructed a cooler for the camera to combat some of the noise issues from the DSLRs.

I started submitting some of my DSLR work to Astronomy Magazine and I could not believe I got published.  It was exciting to see so many of my images in their pages.

 

My next journey was taking all of my DSLR equipment to a truly dark sky site. Wisconsin isn't ideal for deep sky imaging. Luckily, I found New Mexico Skies in Alamogordo, NM. Mike and Lynn Rice were very interested in the work I was doing with digital cameras and accommodated me well. I was astonished at what could be done at a really dark site with the DSLR and a 6" Takahashi refractor. Many more of my images were published. Between 2003 and 2006 I visited New Mexico Skies six times. I was fortunate to meet Ron Wodaski on my second visit.  He let me use his 20" RC; what a treat that was. By the third time at NMS I started to use the CCD cameras available there.  The images from the cooled CCDs were just striking; my DSLRs were then retired.

 

Meanwhile back in Madison our newly formed group moved out on our own and built our first group observatory: the GRO (Greiner Research Observatory).

Five members made up the astronomy team and each member had their own technical niche. It was a great facility.  We had success with both imaging and asteroid searching. A 16 CAT and a 5 inch refractor were mounted on one Paramount with two STL cameras from SBIG.  Unfortunately, after less than 2 years, we had to dismantle it due to one if the group members' loss of the land it was on. To say the least this was a big disappointment.

 

It wasn't long before our hunt for a new dark sky site began.  Matt Mills was on a massive search for months and found a truly nice spot for the New "DGRO" (Doc Greiner Research Observatory). This time, our team (consisting of Doc G, Matt Mills, Greg Sellek, and myself), wanted to accommodate two piers as clear skies here in Wisconsin are hard to come by. We planned to be able to use both scopes on each clear night. This is a truly state-of-the-art observatory where the two scopes can be run at the same time completely by remote control over the internet. Our equipment is top notch and we are currently waiting on delivery of a 14.5" RC, to replace our 5" TMB refractor.