Amateur astronomer Mike Renzi of Lakeville is serious about his hobby and was happy to share his story and photos with us at our Dec. 4th meeting. He built his own observatory at his Lakeville home of 17 years. As a ten-year old he was captivated by the movie, “2001, A space odyssey”. The science inspired him to learn coding so he could track the celestial bodies.Mike built a 8” reflector telescope and ground his own lenses to the desired focal length and parabola, and then built his observatory around it. With it he can do astro-photography and produce brilliant images of the galaxies. He pointed out that our sun is a huge star that shows no signs of diminishing. A “nebula” is an exploded star, an enormous gas and dust cloud. Once you know the constellations you can find nebulas, and there are many galaxies around the big dipper. When asked about “extraterrestrial life” he said that even simple life forms need a narrow range of heat, light, carbon and oxygen and then a couple million years for evolution. Possible, but not probable.
