Our speaker will be attending in person, please try to attend in person too!
Agenda:
7:00 - 7:15 General Meeting & Announcements
7:15 - 7:30 Short topic presentation by a club member
7:30 - 7:45 Refreshment break
7:45 - Public Presentation
Speaker:
Jerry Cheney, PhD, OD
Alachua Astronomy Club
Topic: How to Build a Home Observatory
Abstract:
A home observatory offers the amateur astronomer more and better opportunities to observe the night sky. Instead of spending hours setting up and breaking down equipment on a nightly basis, you can begin observations after only a few minutes of setup. Larger mounts and telescopes that are prohibitive to bring out and put away nightly can be accommodated easily in a well built observatory. Using my observatory build as an example, I will discuss many of the issues you need to consider in building an observatory. Your observatory build will differ based on your observing goals and equipment, your building skills, your location, and your budget.
About the Speaker:
Jerry Cheney grew up in southeast Texas. He earned his BS in Biology from Lamar University in 1976 and went on to earn his PhD in Biological Oceanography from the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography in 1981. He then accepted a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he met and married his lovely wife, Marianne. They have two sons, Michael, an industrial engineer in Tampa, and Chris, currently in his final year of Pharmacy School at UF.
Dr. Cheney taught oceanography at the college level and continued his studies of the distribution of zooplankton in the North Atlantic, but after ten years he decided to change careers to become an optometrist. He graduated from the New England College of Optometry in 1994. The family moved to Florida in 1997 and eventually settled in Ocala, where Dr. Cheney practiced for fifteen years. He had the good fortune to be able to retire in 2014.
Dr. Cheney always had an interest in astronomy, and being a scientist by general nature and training, he has taken up astronomy as hobby in retirement He joined the Alachua Astronomy Club in 2015 and has served in the club’s administration for many years, including as president from 2017 to 2019. He teaches science courses, including astronomy, through Senior Learners in Ocala.
