Club Officers
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President - Joe Dechene |
Joe is an avid telescope maker with Stellafane awards for mechanical, optical, and craftsmanship. He likes to use his homemade telescopes for astrophotography and observing. He has been an NHAS member for a long time and participates in Sky Watches in the Nashua area. He contributes to diversity in STEM fields as a mentor for Stand and Deliver. Joe works in the field of technical innovation and also likes photography and to play ice hockey |
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Vice President - Larry LaForge |
Larry has been an NHAS member since 1994. He first fell in love with astronomy at 7 years old, when he received a 2" reflecting telescope (that’s right a Newtonian telescope not a refractor) and a family friend showed him Jupiter and Saturn. He enjoys helping out at Sky Watches and talking about astronomy with the public. He owns an 18" Obsession, an old classic C8, a 110mm refactor, and a Coronado Hα solar scope. He enjoys deep sky observing hunting down faint objects. He is also a former president of the Vermont Astronomical Society. |
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Secretary - Paul Winalski |
Paul has been an NHAS member since 2004. An avid amateur astronomer as a teenager, he actively resumed the hobby in 2003. His main astronomical interests are public observing, deep-sky objects, and carbon stars. Paul's current telescopes are a 14" TScope reflector, 85mm TeleVue refractor, and a Coronado PST H-alpha scope. When not observing, Paul is a software engineer with Intel Corporation. |
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Treasurer - Pete Smith |
Pete has been a NHAS member since 2011. A latecomer to astronomy, he went to the New England Fall Astronomy Festival at UNH and it convinced him to buy an Orion XT8i Dobsonian reflector and join up with NHAS. Pete enjoys visual observing and attending an occasional skywatch. He became interested in the Library Telescope Program. in March of 2012 when attending a "Mod Party" where NHAS members modify the Orion Starblast scopes to LTP standards. When not scouring the skies for nebulae and galaxies, he enjoys scuba diving, hiking, camping and listening to the blues. |
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Board of Directors
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Chairman - David McDonald |
Dave McDonald fell in love with astronomy in the 7th grade when he took out a book from his Junior High School library - Point to the Stars* He got his first 2.4" refractor in the 9th grade. He thought of becoming an astrophysicist but became a math teacher and high school principal instead. After leaving formal education for a time, he became the Education Director of the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center for ten years. He has also taught astronomy for Granite State College, Plymouth State University Graduate School, NHTI, and Belmont High School. He is now back in the high school class room teaching Math and various other STEM subjects. He is an active member of the NHAS and has his own cable TV show - The Sky This Month * Upon graduating from 9th grade, the librarian gave him that book to keep as he was the only person in three years to have checked it out regularly. |
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Director - Dave Roy |
Dave has been an NHAS member since about 2017. He enjoy observing and public outreach and looks forward to helping our communities better understand and appreciate the wonders of the night sky. By day, Dave is a heavy equipment and truck mechanic, and also has a background in the building trades. |
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Junior Director - Tom Cocchiaro |
Tom has been an NHAS member since 2006 and has been involved in a wide range of club committees and activities from the Education Outreach Committee and Library Telescope Program to public observing, sidewalk astronomy and coordinating major-event participation like Market Square Day and First Night in Portsmouth, N.H. As co-founder of the New England Fall Astronomy Festival he continues to wear many hats including sponsorship solicitation, coordinating guest speakers, and event promotion. Early in his membership, Tom also secured a $5,000 grant for NHAS from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation that made it possible for the club to purchase the new laptops, video projectors and screens used in public outreach presentations. When not involved in NHAS activities, he manages parking operations for the City of Portsmouth and serves as one of only three NASA Solar Systems Ambassadors in the state. One of the astronomy equipment addicted, he has way too much astronomy 'stuff' to list in this limited space. |
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Committee Chairs
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Astrophotography - Herb Bubert |
Herb has been a member of NHAS for fifteen years, ten of which he has spent imaging the night sky with various telescopes and cameras. One of his pet projects is imaging Saturn through one complete orbit of the Sun. He hopes to complete this project sometime in 2033. When he's not doing visual observing or Astrophotography, Herb works as a Property Manager on Newbury Street in Boston. |
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Educational Outreach - Steve Rand |
Steve is a retired Earth-Space science teacher and has been an active NHAS member since 2012. As an undergraduate he was a lecturer at the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston. As an additional member of the Public Observing Committee and the Library Telescope Committee, Steve’s interest centers around furthering public awareness of Astronomy. |
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Library Telescope Program - Pete Smith |
Pete has been a NHAS member since 2011. A latecomer to astronomy, he went to the New England Fall Astronomy Festival at UNH and it convinced him to buy an Orion XT8i Dobsonian reflector and join up with NHAS. Pete enjoys visual observing and attending an occasional skywatch. He became interested in the Library Telescope Program. in March of 2012 when attending a "Mod Party" where NHAS members modify the Orion Starblast scopes to LTP standards. When not scouring the skies for nebulae and galaxies, he enjoys scuba diving, hiking, camping and listening to the blues. |
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Observatory Management - Tim Printy |
Tim has been an amateur astronomer since 1972. His biggest interests are astrophotography, comets, and meteors. He was the president of the Central Florida Astronomical Society in late 1980’s and has been an NHAS member since 2000. |
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Observatory Management - Dave Roy |
Dave has been an NHAS member since about 2017. He enjoy observing and public outreach and looks forward to helping our communities better understand and appreciate the wonders of the night sky. By day, Dave is a heavy equipment and truck mechanic, and also has a background in the building trades. |
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Public Observing - Paul Winalski |
Paul has been an NHAS member since 2004. An avid amateur astronomer as a teenager, he actively resumed the hobby in 2003. His main astronomical interests are public observing, deep-sky objects, and carbon stars. Paul's current telescopes are a 14" TScope reflector, 85mm TeleVue refractor, and a Coronado PST H-alpha scope. When not observing, Paul is a software engineer with Intel Corporation. |
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Public Observing - Gardner Gerry |
Gardner has been an NHAS member since 2003 and Public Observing Co-Chair beginning in 2010. He has also served two terms as club president and has served on the NHAS Board of Directors. He is active with the Educational Outreach Committee and the Public Observing program and received the NHAS Public Observing Recognition Award for 2003. When not involved with NHAS activities and astrophotography pursuits he is a Camera Service Technician with Axsys Technologies/General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Nashua, NH. |
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Stellafane Coordinator - Joel Harris |
Joel is a founding member of NHAS, telescope maker, former president (three times), former board member, former secretary, hybrid car nut, machinist, trumpeter, space and classical music lover, and Yogi. |
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Mailing List Manager - Pete Smith |
Pete has been a NHAS member since 2011. A latecomer to astronomy, he went to the New England Fall Astronomy Festival at UNH and it convinced him to buy an Orion XT8i Dobsonian reflector and join up with NHAS. Pete enjoys visual observing and attending an occasional skywatch. He became interested in the Library Telescope Program. in March of 2012 when attending a "Mod Party" where NHAS members modify the Orion Starblast scopes to LTP standards. When not scouring the skies for nebulae and galaxies, he enjoys scuba diving, hiking, camping and listening to the blues. |
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Webmaster - Mathew Marulla |
Matt has been an NHAS member since 2004 and served two terms as club president. He is a software, systems, and cloud engineer by trade, holds an Astrophysics degree, and is the former Chief Technology Officer at the SLOOH online observatory. When the New Hampshire weather permits, he images the skies with an Explore Scientific 127mm APO refractor and a William Optics 80mm APO refractor, both on an AstroPhysics 900GTO mount. |
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