I am a retired computer consultant living in Lake Oswego, Oregon with my wife and three kids. I have been involved with astro-imaging for about five years, although I have recently sold my equipment and purchased a sailboat.  I became interested in astro-imaging while using a Nikon spotting scope to view birds and wildlife. One clear evening, after spending the day observing birds in Klamath Falls National Wildlife Refuge,  I saw, what appeared to be a bright star to the south and decided to point the spotting scope at the star to see how it looked. After focusing I was surprised to find that the bright star was really the planet Jupiter. I was amazed that I could make out Jupiter's four moons, Jupiter's bands and colors with my 60X spotting scope. I turned the spotting scope to another nearby bright star to find it was Saturn! Those events peaked my interest. 

When I returned home, I started reading heavily about astro-imaging and after about six months decided to purchase a high end system that would support taking precision auto-guided CCD images.  I purchased a quality 5 inch f6 refractor (Astro-Physics) a precision German Equatorial mount (Astro-Physics) , and a high-resolution ST10XE CCD camera (SBIG) with an integrated auto-guider, several eye pieces, and proceeded to assemble my system. I learned how to polar align, how to guide, how to focus, and the many techniques and procedures required to acquire and process a set of images to be combined and processed further to make the final high-resolution image. 

I did most of my imaging from our patio in our backyard. The neighbors have been pretty good about keeping their patio lights off or directed away from our home. I have a very narrow field of view facing due south with the sky transparency and seeing being about average. I used 'The Sky' software (Software Bisque) to plan what objects I would image during the evening. The current trend is to take combined images, usually two to four hours in duration for a given object. I personally have not taken combined images over an hour, however, as my technique improved, so did the exposure durations. I took my first acceptable CCD images in July of  2002. 

I am new to the hobby and the technical and physical requirements can be challenging, however, the rewards, as you watch an image come to life on your PC, more than compensates for the effort. Fortunately, the Internet provides access to a great bunch of men and women who have been very helpful and supportive in answering questions I may have, or, in just disseminating general information about techniques or procedures to the others within the different e-mail groups.

...Terry Johnson