Jacob Gerritsen
Jacob is a 58 year old retired Dutch born internist from Camden, Maine who first fell in love with the night sky when he went on a field trip in 1976 to visit the telescopes on Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii with his then girlfriend, now wife.
He ground his first mirror, a 6”, while working in the Bay Area, where a certain John Dobson taught him the finer points of grinding.
The next year he made a F/15 4” mirror that performed quite well as figuring wasn’t needed. He then bought the classic 8” Celestron, which he still owns.
Next came an 18” Dob 4 years ago and frustration at the lack of detail visible even through 18” at sea level. Since then he has become ever more obsessed with astro-photography.
The past three years have been spent building a robotic roll-off observatory 10 miles from his house in Lincolnville at a fairly dark site.
The first year was wasted trying to get a Meade 14” RCX to work properly for astrophotography and he finally wised up and is now the proud recent owner of Doug George’s RCOS 12.5. He got incredibly lucky when an acquaintance donated a Paramount he had after reading about the observatory in the local papers.
He’s been a guest at the Kitt Peak Advanced Imaging course and a highlight was seeing M51 in amazing detail for the first time through a 20” RCOS.
When not imaging he loves to sail and is married with two grown sons.