The purpose of this section of the page is dedicated to images I have taken myself. I hope the images will improve as I get more experienced at image capturing and processing.

This presentation goes through the history of radio astronomy and SETI. It also tries to illustrate what SETI, in its current form, looks for. Other topics include SETI@home, Drake Equation, and the search for Earth.

Presented October 22nd, 2003 at the UW Observatory.

To view the presentation in Internet Explorer, click here.

To download the presentation in Power Point form, right-click here and "Save target as…"

This presentation addresses many of the questions concerning the Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud. It also touches lightly on the topic of Pluto’s planet status. These two objects are just a hot topic in the news due to the increasing media attention given to each small body found.

Presented April 21st, 2004 at the UW Observatory.

To view the presentation in Internet Explorer, click here.

To download the presentation in Power Point form, right-click here and "Save target as…"

Thanks for taking the time to browse this website. The idea to create a website dedicated to visual Astronomy through amateur equipment, astronomical news, and other interesting space oriented topics (manned spaceflight, NASA, history, etc.) came to me through a class I was taking at the University of Washington.

"Modern Topics in Astronomy" is a section dedicated to Astronomy outreach at the University of Washington. The class mainly focuses on presenting Astronomy-oriented talks open to the public and the campus community of the UW. You can learn more about these ongoing presentations at the UW Campus Observatory’s website.

As I mentioned above, the main goal of the class was to prepare students for giving public talks on Astronomy-related topics. However, there were other supplemental tasks you could complete as well. One of those was building a website.

The first iteration of this website, which I turned in for points, was junk. It had a little bit of content, a links page, and a few pretty pictures, but I generally disliked it. Creating a website is no easy task and it did take a long time, but I decided that I should make something with a little more flexibility and lasting power. So I set out to create the version you are looking at now.

You can find any presentations I have given at the UW Campus Observatory on the Presentations page and any news I find worth publishing on the News page. Furthermore, I intend to add my experiences with the equipment I have spent an embarrassing amount of money on and post any pictures I get around to taking.

Thanks for visiting. If you run across any errors or have a comment, send me an email, I would be happy to hear from you.

You will find Power Point presentations on various Astronomy-related topics here. Hopefully they will be of some use to you. Although you are free to modify them to suit your needs, the obvious restrictions apply: no selling them or publishing as your own. If you notice something that is incorrect in any of the presentations, please let me know.