George's photos of Comet Hale Bopp as seen over a two month time period.

I have been interested in astronomy ever since he was a small child looking at the stars from the farm I lived on near Glendale Arizona in the 1940's.

Then in 1975 I became very interested in amateur astronomy, and a short time later, I obtained my first telescope, a 13-inch Newtonian from Coulter Optical in California. With this telescope I viewed the entire Messier list of objects over a two year time period, and then started working on the NGC list as the obvious next step.

I then purchased a copy of the NGC and IC, as a single volume, from Willmann-Bell in the late 1970's, and so started my love affair with the ancient astronomers. For those who don't know, the NGC is a collection of objects discovered visually by about 100 different astronomers. As I would observe these objects, I would search the local libraries to see what I could find about each of them.

I am a high school science and history teacher by profession, which might help explain my growing interest in the stories behind each of the NGC objects, and who the discoverers were. Back in the mid 1980's during two summers, while studying for my Masters Degree at Northern Arizona University (NAU), I spent some time in the Lowell Observatory Library researching the NGC objects. The Lowell Observatory library has a lot of good historical papers published by some of these Ancient Astronomers, as does the Arizona State University library.

Also, as the web has matured, additional information of this sort has appeared on various web sites, and it continues to grow in availability and richness, especially concerning the historical papers and documents.

Over the years, I've added to my list of the historical information of Ancient Astronomers and I have actually created an index of information such as; the NGC Objects listing the NGC objects by designation, the Ancient Astronomer who discovered the object, the year of his birth, the year of his death, the year the object was discovered, and the size of the telescope or instrument used to make the discovery. The list certainly isn't complete by any stretch of the imagination, but as time goes on, and I find over information, I'll fill in some of the blanks in the table of the ancient astronomers associated with the NGC. For me, this is but an interesting and enjoyable hobby, and so in this spirit, I wish to share this information, I have found, with anyone who is interested. There is a link on this page to the NGC Ancient Astronomers Index.

I hope that this information might be helpful to others with the same passion for astronomy.

Also enclosed on this page are some photos and other historical information about astronomy that I have put together in my spare time over the past 40 + years.

Thank you for visiting my web site,

Clear Skies!

George