Within a short time, he was taking pictures of the moon, planets and anything else that happened to be visible in the sky and learning the dark room magic that goes with making astronomical photographs, along the way. He experimented with what was then a new technique called "chilled emulsion" photography by building a special camera. He hoped to produce better pictures with this device which makes it possible to expose the film longer, thus imaging fainter objects. But, alas, he was to soon realize that the coffee table book pictures were simply out of his reach with the 3 inch aperture of his refractor. Looking for an affordable larger aperture telescope proved to be equally elusive. This is where the dream stood till that fortuitus colloquium meeting in New York.
A chance meeting with Sir Patrick Moore, that well known author and popularizer of astronomy, at a colloquium on Transient Lunar Phenomena in 1963, brought a glimmer of hope to his dreams. While sitting at the hotel bar one evening talking to Sir Patrick about the difficulties of justifying an expensive larger telescope so he might possibly consider trying to do some serious work, Moore said simply "...Why don't you just build it?" The seed was planted and a challenge had been issued. Two years later on Thanksgiving night, first light filtered through what was to become the present backbone of the Braeside facility, all designed and constructed by Fried.
Eleven years later, Braeside Observatory was officially founded and accepted by the IRS as a Private Operating Foundation, a 501 ( c ), ( 3), non-profit organization. This opened the way to proposing for grants to support what Fried had begun. In 1978, contact was made with a professional astronomer who wanted research data that Fried was able to supply. A mentoring relationship was established and as collaboration with other astronomers from all over the world began to increase, Fried began learning what it was like in the real world of professional astronomy.
Fried's first paper in collaboration with a this professional astronomer (D. S. Hall, Vanderbilt University) was in the journal "Astrophysics and Space Science" (1982) and contained his photoelectric photometry measurements. Thus began what has become a list of more that 50 papers, co-authored with a score of astronomers from around the world, in the journals as listed in the international database, SIMBAD, at Strasbourg, France. Since 1995, when the Braeside CCD camera was first added to the telescope accessories, more than 39,000 images have been taken in support of the work at Braeside. Meanwhile, the observatory continues to upgrade its technical capability and productivity.
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