Home Page

I’m a retired engineer whose hobby is astrophotography. Astronomy was introduced to me by my neighbor back East in my late teens.  We built a Edmund Scientific 6″ Newtonian telescope in my basement. We grounded and polished a Pyrex blank mirror, and an aluminum coating was applied by Edmund Scientific. It was fascinating to see Saturn’s rings and the Galilean moons around Jupiter.

Twenty years later I moved out West for my EE degrees and brought the telescope with me.  I didn’t have much time for it and it was heavy, so I gave it to my college friend. After I graduated with my Masters, I worked for Raytheon in Tucson and on one of my business trips, I renewed my interest in astronomy while I was looking at the night stars on Kwajalein Island in the Pacific. I bought a 11″ Celestron Cassegrain from Starizona in Tucson soon after and spent many years visually observing deep sky objects. I later began using a one-shot color camera and captured many images with that. One evening after carrying all my gear out to the field, I was up until midnight setting up my equipment, before capturing any images. After that, I decided my next imaging session would be from my own observatory with new equipment as you see here. It was challenging to synchronize everything together, but I finally got there with the help from the equipment vendors and my partner at the site. Next I need to hone my skills in PixInsight. I also recently went to a local community college since I retired and took courses on astronomy.