NASA APOD - 5/22/15

A Dark and Dusty Sky (LDN 1495/LBN 777)
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My Astronomical Background

I became interested in Astronomy when I read Peterson Publishing's Field Guide to the Stars when I was 9. When I was 12, my parents bought me my first telescope, a 60mm Meade Alt-Azimuth refractor. While it wasn't a particularly great scope, it gave me my first live views of Saturn and Jupiter. I was hooked.

When I was 22, I bought my current telescope, a Celestron C-8 Schmidt-Cassegrain. With this scope, I began doing astrophotography. This was in the "good old days" of film. I photographed some of my best images back then using hypered Fujichrome 400 and hypered 2415 Tech Pan. In 1984, I was lucky enough to have Bill Schaefer custom build a German Equatorial mount for my telescope. It's an extremely stable and well constructed mount that has served me well for almost 30 years now.

I took a long hiatus from astrophotography, but have recently rekindled my interest. Its amazing to see the results one can now obtain with digital astrophotography, as many amateur astrophotographers are easily creating photos that far exceed the quality of astrophotos I used to see from the largest observatories when I first became interested in Astronomy.

With this site, my intent is to share some of my astrophoto attempts with you, my website visitor.

Thank you for stopping by......

Scott Rosen
Pine Mountain Club, California