Scott Hammonds

My interest in Astronomy started at an early age, but it wasn’t until recently that I became active in the hobby. When I was six years old, my family moved to the small town of Titusville, Florida. This town sits directly across the Indian River from Kennedy Space Center. It was there that a life long interest in space and space exploration began. A number of my friend’s fathers were engineers on the Apollo program and it was through one of them that I got my first look through a telescope, a small refractor. I can still remember gazing into the little scope at a fuzzy object whose name now escapes me. It’s amazing how I can remember the detail of that night, but can’t remember what I had for dinner last week. That night had an impact on me. But since then, many years passed in pursuit of career goals which put off my being active in astronomy until just four years ago. I did get a chance to work on a project during my senior year at college associated with the ISS. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering I spent the next 8 years flying in the US Navy. I had been threatening to buy a telescope for a number of years when my wife bought me the Meade ETX-90. I currently own two scopes, a 10-inch Meade LX200 Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope and a Televue NP-101 apochromatic refractor. Not long after I started my active interest in Astronomy I began to take a few pictures with my telescope. I quickly became addicted to this part of the amateur astronomy hobby. It didn't take long for me to recognize the potential to share the wonders of creation through images of the night sky. I was already active in sharing literal creation by teaching classes at my church and this seemed like a natural addition to that ministry. I was raised in a Christian home by very Godly parents, but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I began serving God and asked him to be Lord of my life. Like most people I was “introduced” to evolution in school and had a difficult time reconciling what I was taught in the Bible to evolutionary theories. I tried to make long ages (i.e. millions of years) fit within the frame work of the Bible and specifically into the creation week of Genesis 1. Several years ago I began in earnest to find the answers to many of my questions. I discovered there were many Bible believing scientists that went against the grain and accepted literal creation as taught in Genesis 1. This was already what I believed, but now I had solid evidence and material to help me defend my faith. It is my desire that Heavenly-Light.com and our images of the night sky will help others find the answers they are looking for as well.