I always had an interest in astronomy and can recall looking through my older brother’s refractor as a teenager. I started to get into astronomy seriously when my wife bought me an Orion SpaceProbe™ 130ST EQ, a 5.1″ Reflector (or Newtonian) telescope. I later modified this scope with a single axis motor for tracking. I also tinkered with astrophotograhpy using a Canon G2 primarily (taking pictures by putting the camera right up to the eyepiece, or afocul photography). Some memorable pictures I took are of the October 2004 lunar eclipse and pictures of Saturn (we took these while on vacation in Vermont). I found the the biggest driver for me was the sense of awe I got when I peered at an astronomical object that I knew was light-years away — it really gives you a sense of our smallness in God’s universe. You can see my pictures in general here.

After doing more research (including looking into forums such as can be found on cloudynights.com), subscribing to some astronomy magazines, and talking live to some hobbyists (star-parties are good for this), I decided to take a bigger plunge and purchased a Meade 10″ LX200GPS-SMT (don’t have a current Meade link since they now focus on making the LX200R). About the same time, I upgraded my digital camera to a Canon Digital Rebel (300D) which is a Digital SLR (or DSLR) camera. More information regarding my equipment can be found here.

I hope to use this blog as a ‘journal’ of my experiences with this hobby but I also hope to encourage you to continue to pursue this hobby if you’re just getting into astronomy. Fortunately or unfortunately, there’s really no end to how far/deep you can get into this hobby but it’s a lot of fun and there are plenty of people out there who really enjoy sharing their passion and excitement about astronomy.

Best regards,
Roy