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I am Sjoerd Dufoer. I was interested in astronomy ever since I was little. By growing up this fascinations evolved in a real hobby.
I was as a kid always a fan of SF series as Startrek and Babylon 5 and this triggered a deeper interest when I matured up. When I was 15 I received a telescope for my
birthday as a present from my father. With that scope I started observing the nightsky. I already knew the sky by using a pair of binoculars until then. This way I knew the contellations
but the dim deepsky objects were new for me and these were visible in the telescope. The first years of my hobby existed about searching and drawing every deepsky object
I could imagine. I also did some planetary observations but that was not my real passion. I started where the solar system faded
into the interstellar sky.
Later, on the dawn of the new millenium I started to earn some money and I could afford some bigger toys. With the advent of CCD-camera's that became affordable for amateur-astronomers, I started to get involved in
astrophotography. Technology advanced fast but unfortunately I had to put the astronomy-hobby aside to get started in life. I moved from a small village to the big city and attend university. Discovered nightlife, discovered girls... Need I to say more. ;-)
As I matured up, I slowly started to get involved in astronomy again. Living in the city defenitely has some challenges. Trips towards the mountains or the woods proved too big loss of time and sitting in the nightly cold and damp at the eyepiece gets more and more physically challenging. I did some excursions to Africa to visually observe the southern deepsky-objects.
But I learned that having a big telescope under extremely dark skies is not heaven and I installed a small telescope on my city balcony, from where I could participate in observation campaings aiding the professional astronomy world. This is even possible under heavy light polluted skies.
From one thing came the other. I decided to install a remote observatory in E-Eye, Extremadura, Spain and focus on automated variable star observing. Together with the setup on my city balcony this combination proved to be a winner.
You get a little bit older, you want to save energy and you need a steady sleep rhythm to combine astronomy with a professional job. Modern technology and automated telescope setups makes it possible to participate in observation campagains while you sleep.
My mail: sdufoer(at)gmail(dot)com
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