On the Personal Side

摘要

Just as my route to a career in this field has been rather unusual, I have always had a very diverse set of hobbies and interests. I've maintained most of them since growing up, although I didn't discover golf until my mid-thirties—which I also find is a really great way to do butterfly, wildflower, and bird-watching, if I play the right courses. I grew up in a suburb of an Air Force town—Dayton, Ohio—so I had a lot of exposure to military aviation from childhood. It's also an area rich with early American history and Native American life. So, I've been an avid reader of all sorts of history and historical fiction, and I've had a great interest in aviation history, particularly from World War II onward. I still have 100+scale model historically accurate aircraft models that I built in my twenties and thirties. On my current bucket list is taking the opportunity whenever possible to fty in World War II vintage aircraft [see the photograph at left]. I have also maintained my interest in astronomy. ! spent countless nights out with my telescope growing up, sometimes at the expense of school work. I look forward to reviving that as a retirement hobby. I signed up for the Advanced Observation Program for Amateurs at Kitt Peak Observatory [56 miles southwest of Tucson, Ariz.] last year and used its program telescope to image two of my favorite astronomical objects, the M-51 Whirlpool galaxy [shown on the cover] and the M-3 globular star cluster. Flynn Haase of the observation program staff was my mentor for the night, and I give him full credit for the software manipulations and setup.