The Stories | The Photos
The following is from a profile of Bruce written by Terry Hunefeld for the Fall 1988 issue of the Inside Orbit…
Bruce Sidell
As recently as several years ago, Bruce P. Sidell was riding his bicycle an average of 6,000 miles a year. Now he complains of having time to ride "only 1,200 miles a year." You see, galaxy hunting seriously cuts into Bruce's riding time. He's observed more than 1,000 galaxies from Kissing Rock Hill using his "cookbook telescope."
Bruce has a longstanding interest in astronomy. He began attending public open house nights at the Veen Observatory in the early 1970's. After more than a decade of looking at M-13 and the Ring Nebula through the Veen telescopes, Bruce wanted to see more. Comet Halley was the catalyst. Bruce attended many of the "Halley watches" held by the G.R.A.A.A. in the spring of 1986. He purchased Richard Berry's book about telescope making from Downtown Books... followed the instructions almost to the letter... and ended up with one of the best all-around observing telescopes this writer has ever seen. Bruce confided that prior to reading Richard Berry's book he never dreamed that he could make his own telescope. He calls it a cookbook telescope because all he had to do was follow the directions.
After Bruce built his telescope, he took it to dark skies at Fisk Knob in northern Kent County and to dark fields between Grand Rapids and Ionia. He spent the summer of 1986 learning his way around the sky. One of first experiences was trying to find M-13... without a finder! His telescope now sports a beautiful 8 x 50 finder with an amici prism. This enables Bruce to pick his way through the skies, comparing his finder view to a Sky Atlas 2,000 without being confused by a reversed view.
Bruce joined the G.R.A.A.A. in early 1987 and began using the front yard of the Veen Observatory to observe all the Messier objects. Since then, Bruce has observed most of the NGC objects, the Sky Atlas 2,000 objects, and is working his way through the Uranometria. He's eagerly anticipating the receipt of his newest Uranometria of the southern skies.
Bruce has attended Astrofest, the Texas Star Party, and the Stellafane Telescope Builders Convention. He's constantly looking at other telescopes and admits to lusting after a nice four-inch refractor.
After two summers of plowing through over a thousand galaxies from the Veen site, Bruce knows his way around the skies better than any member of the G.R.A.A.A. To Bruce, "frogging around" means knocking off 20 to 30 thirteenth magnitude galaxies in an evening. While checking out these galaxies, Bruce always takes the time to take a look at the "showpiece objects," like the Ring Nebula, the Crab Nebula, the Veil Nebula, etc., etc., etc.
For those of you who are perhaps thinking of building a telescope, stop out at the Veen Observatory on almost any dark, clear moonless night and Bruce will be more than happy to show you why you don't need setting circles, clock drives or C.A.T.'s to have one of the finest observing telescopes possible.
Bruce has also become the unofficial telescope "collimator" of the Association. The next time you use the Hawkins Dobsonian or Borr Reflector, take a look at the primary mirror and note the black dot in the exact center. Bruce painstakingly installed these dots so that with some special equipment, he can precisely collimate either telescope quickly, easily and probably better than they have ever been aligned before. We. also owe the increased ease of operation of the Hawkins Dobsonian focuser assembly and mounting to Bruce. He installed all new Teflon pads on the Dobsonian, enabling observers to easily glide the humongous telescope anywhere in the sky. In mid-September, Bruce noticed that there were finger marks all over the Dobsonian diagonal mirror. The next weekend he was at the observatory on a Saturday afternoon, cleaning the diagonal and recollimating the telescope.
If Bruce isn't at the Veen Observatory on a clear night, he is probably in his front yard on Cascade Road observing the moon or the planets. As one of the regular observers at the Veen Observatory, Bruce has repeatedly demonstrated that you don't have to ride your bike 6,000 miles a year to be a "hard lad."