Sky Vistas

Gerald Rhemann, born in Vienna, became interested in astronomy when he was very young. His first telescope was a small Newtonian reflector, and with it he familiarized himself with what is where in the sky. However, his interest in astronomy was sidelined for several years by his commitments to his business education, and to training for competitive karate. In 1981 he established a camera store and photo studio in Vienna.
The reappearance of Halley's comet in 1985/86 rekindled Mr. Rhemann's interest in astronomy. In 1989 he obtained his first astrophoto, of the Andromeda Galaxy. He has gone on to photograph, with many different kinds of telescopes and lenses, countless deep-sky objects, Milky Way fields, and comets. Most of his photography has been done under the dark, clear skies of the Austrian Alps; but he has also sky-shot in the Canary Islands, and in 2001 travelled to Namibia in southwest Africa to photograph the far southern heavens from the Kalahari Desert.
Because of his business, Mr. Rhemann has always been able to do his own darkroom work. Several years ago he began computer image-processing his photographs, and recently has branched out into CCD photography. His work has been published in several magazines, including Sky and Telescope, Astronomy, and Sterne und Weltraum, and appears on the covers of a number of astronomy books.
Gerald Rhemann is married and has two children. He and his family live in the Hütteldorf suburb of Vienna on the edge of the Vienna Woods, where he is only an hours' drive from transparent mountain skies. His work can be accessed on the internet at www.astrostudio.at.

Craig Crossen, a native of the clear skies and cold winter nights of northern Minnesota, has been interested in astronomy since he was thirteen years old. His first telescope was a 2½-inch refractor, but he soon assembled a 6-inch Newtonian reflector from purchased parts. However, from the first he was interested not only in deep-sky observing, butalso in the history and mythology of the constellations.
After attending the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he earned a degree in English Literature, and Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Mr. Crossen returned to the family farm. There he rediscovered the stars and took advantage of his transparent skies to thoroughly study the heavens with his old 6-inch reflector and with new 10x50 binoculars. In 1982 he wrote his first of several articles for Astronomy magazine, ""Studying Galactic Structure with Binoculars,"" which the magazine published in two parts the next year.
He and his grandmother sold the family farm in 1989. Mr. Crossen subsequently did two years of post-graduate study at the University of Minnesota (English Literature and Astrophysics), and travelled three times to the Middle East researching a book about T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). In the meantime he published his first book, Binocular Astronomy, and wrote a book-length introduction to deep-sky astronomy for the two-volume Night Sky Observer's Guide.
Because one of the centers for research in the history of astronomy is the Oriental Institute of the University of Vienna, Mr. Crossen visited Vienna three times before settling there permanently. He is presently completing a book about the ancient Babylonian constellations as well as the book about T. E. Lawrence. He and Mr. Rhemann have also begun work on a book about the Milky Way