John Mcdonald is from North Carolina. He attended public school and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he took an Astronomy and Physics course and saw his first Solar eclipse. During his college years, NASA Astronauts trained at the Moorehead Planetarium, one of his all time favorite places, and spent many hours there. One of John's college mentors taught the physics of photography and was an avid amateur astronomer. After taking his course, John was hired in the university photo lab as a photographer and lab tech, and through this blend of photography and astronomy he became hooked on all things celestial. John’s professional career began in 1970 in broadcast news film processing at a Charlotte, North Carolina television station, and later he moved to Sales and Sales Management in broadcast radio, TV, and Cable Network business automation and master control automation. He joined the Charlotte Amateur Astronomy Club in the early 1970’s and bought his first telescope and later upgraded to a marvelous instrument that he still enjoys to this day. He has taken his telescope to Australia several times and viewed multiple Solar eclipses, comets, solar system planets and deep sky objects. John has lived in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Colorado. He retired in 2003 and moved to Shanghai, China, where he lived there on and off for 5 years in an area known as the French Concession. He returned home in 2008 to care for aging parents.