Like a lot of amateur astronomers, I started taking images of the night sky because what I saw through the eyepiece was not what I was seeing on the printed page. As a boy, I frequented our local library and checked out every astronomy book that I could find. I would spend countless hours looking over the pictures taken by professional astronomers from places like Palomar Mountain and Mt. Wilson. When I finally got my first telescope (age 12) I was less than impressed by what I saw. The little (60mm) Sears refractor didn't show me any of the fantastic images that I saw in those books. None-the-less, I was able to see the rings of Saturn and "bam" I was hooked. It wasn't until years later that I was able to return to the night sky. After finishing school, my family and I moved to southeast Idaho. The sky was darker than anywhere I had previously lived -- so I started back into astronomy. I first imaged with film; an OM-1 piggybacked on a Celestron-8 SCT. After some success I decided to go with CCD imaging. My first camera was an SBIG ST-237 with color wheel. It helped me learn the process of taking color CCD images and begin down the road of image processing.
My current telescope project is an Astro-Physics 305mm f/3.8 Riccardi-Honders astrograph (Serial # 001) with an Finger Lakes Instruments Proline -16803 CCD camera. They ride atop an Astro-Physics 1200 GTO mount. I have these in a clamshell dome which I call Starsearch Observatory 1. Other equipment includes an Astro-Physics 155 EDF f/7 refractor (with a full field reducer I can image at f/5.4) with the FLI Proline -16803 CCD camera and ST-402e e-finder guider. I had these in Australia (from Feb 2008 to October 2010) at an observatory I shared with famed narrowband imager John Gleason. For wide field imaging I use a Takahashi FSQ-106 f/5 refractor with an SBIG STL-11002XCM and ST-402e e-finder guider which sit atop a Takahashi EM-200 Temma II mount. This is Starsearch Observatory 2 and this setup is on wheels, so I can wheel them out of the garage. I use AstroDon Gen II filters and Baader filters. I also use an AstroDon Takometer for camera rotation on the FSQ.
ASA N12 f/3.8, Inkom,ID 2008
Starsearch1 and 2, Inkom, ID 2011
Astro-Physics 155EDF refractor 2005, Photo Courtesy of Doug Lindley, Idaho State Journal
Astro-Physics 155EDF refractor setup in Australia 2008-2010
