Jeff Medkeff's Home Page

Hi there!

Photo of Jeff.
Jeff shooting a photograph from the wrong side of the studio. See more about this photo.

I'm Jeff Medkeff, not very well known for anything and pretty happy to remain that way. Welcome to my home page! If you came here on purpose, I hope you find what you are looking for. If you got here accidentally, I hope you enjoy your stay.

Site Map (sort of....)

Astronomy: There is an index to the astronomy stuff here, including material brought over from the old site. There is also a sub-index of observing information available. Old material about robotics is kept elsewhere.
Outdoors and Travel: There is an Outdoors and Travel page for your convenience. Unfortunately, there isn't much here; I've traveled a lot more than I've written about it.
Miscellany: There is an index to other stuff that doesn't conveniently belong elsewhere.
Robotic Telescope Stuff - I'm keeping a snapshot of the old roboticobservatory.com site as it appeared the day I sold its parent company, Robotic Observatory Ltd. Note, however, that I'm not maintaining these pages and I'm not accepting clients in the robotic telescope field.

Contacting me:

E-mail me.

The "what I do or what I have done" section:

I currently make my living at photography.
I'm proud to be a volunteer at the Eagle River Nature Center and the Campbell Creek Science Center, mostly giving presentations on astronomy. These presentations are open to the public at no charge, but they are seasonal - we only do them during the winter.
My interest in astronomy is of long standing. I've been an amateur astronomer since I was a child. I've done a little bit of professional work in astronomy: I've discovered a number of asteroids and co-discovered innumerable more; I was a contributing editor at Sky & Telescope magazine for some years. I've also written for Astronomy magazine. I've given a number of talks at various conferences and whatnot. Prior to moving to Alaska, I owned a company called Robotic Observatory, Ltd. We provided observatory automation software and custom coding, and released much of our work as GPL-licensed freeware; the company was sold in the spring of 2004.
You might have seen me on a trail somewhere, as I'm an avid hiker. I tend to to walk during uncrowded, non-peak hours.
I also like to ride bicycle. I self-identify as a roadie, but in early 2005 I acquired my first mountain bike and am trying that out.
I'm a board member of the Samuel Metcalf Foundation, a small foundation that funds (mainly) field biology research.

Narcissistic "Why you should think I'm a cool/great guy" section:

I'm kind to animals. I keep three mammals - two dogs and one cat - all of them rescues, one of them brought into my orbit by my wife. One of the dogs is missing a leg - actually, it isn't missing, we know perfectly well what happened to it; it just isn't attached to the dog any more. I've also been known to be a foster parent to birds.
I have an asteroid named after me - 41450 Medkeff. The citation reads: "Jeff has provided help and distributed free software for robotic operations of observatories, telescope control, data reduction and automatic submission of results to the Minor Planet Center. In this way, he has contributed to the discovery and photometric observations of thousands of asteroids." Tens of thousands, by this point, and also hundreds of supernovae, if you are counting. If you want, you can check out the orbit of this space rock or generate its ephemeris. I surely would like someone to take my asteroid's picture, and send me the results.
I wrote the Introduction to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Amateur Astronomy, a wonderful book about the state of the hobby.
I contributed an image to the Astronomy Picture of the Day site - the picture of the day for November 26, 1998. It was practically my first astrophotograph, so once I hit the big leagues on my first try, I decided it would only get worse from there and I should stop taking pictures of the night sky. Aurora occasionally tempts me to violate my decision, though.

Site Problems and Solutions

Text too small? Too large? It's your browser's fault! This site does not control the size of the text, your browser does. To change it, try this:

Internet Explorer: Hold down the "control" key, and spin the mouse wheel. Or, go to the "view" menu, and select "text size." What you do from there should be clear.
Netscape Navigator: choose "view," and select "increase font" or "decrease font" as necessary.
Mozilla: choose "view," select "text zoom," and then choose "larger" or "smaller." Or, press "ctrl+" or "ctrl-."
Opera: Don't know - would someone tell me what to put in this space? Thanks!

The html here should be compliant and friendly to any platform. In fact, I support the "Viewable with Any Browser" campaign.

Most of my bright ideas about using simple HTML came out of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. Though dated, I still consider it recommended reading.

Still think the formatting of something here is all wrong? Shoot me an e-mail and tell me about it. I use Mozilla Firefox as my main browser, but check the site with Internet Explorer as well. It's definitely possible I've missed something, even though I'm limiting myself to pretty basic HTML.