My interest in astrophotography has been a natural extension of my association with visual astronomy and my use of telescopes. I started with an 8 inch Dobsonian reflector (or a "Dob" as most call them) from Orion telescopes. My first views of the moon and star clusters left me absolutely awe-struck. That was it, I knew that astronomy and star-gazing was something I would be doing for the rest of my life. And I also thought that I would never need a bigger telescope. I couldn't imagine views any more spectacular. But after joining a local astronomy club and looking through a friends 18" Dob, I was hit with the dreaded "aperture fever". Truly, I found out that bigger is so much better. So that set my feet on the road to the making of my first telescope. After a lot of thought and design work and building a full scale model, I settled on building a 16" Dobsonian reflector. Made entirely out of tube steel and aluminum, I fashioned what turned out to be a pretty nice instrument of my own design and fabrication. I have spent literally hundreds of hours looking at some of our Creator's great wonders of the universe. So I guess it is in the pursuit of wanting to linger just a bit longer on the gorgeous views of the vast expanse of space that I bought a camera to mount onto one of my smaller scopes. And yes, just like warm chocolate chip cookies, you just can't have just one.... or two.... or even three for that matter! :) In this my first ever blog post (thanks to my neighbor Michelle for getting me started) I have inserted a picture I took of the Andromeda Galaxy. Talk about a real gem of the Cosmos! It is composed with three 10 minute exposures taken with a Canon 40D. So with this little intro I will end my first blog!
To Infinity and Beyond!!! (gotta' love that Buzz guy)
