I plan on using this as a forum for posting my astroimages, but I may post some unrelated nonsense from time to time.
I guess that since this is my first post I should provide a little background about myself.
I've been interested in astronomy since I was little, but like many things my interest waned as I got older. That's not to say that I completely lost interest, though. Part of the problem was financial, and part was the fact that I lived in places where viewing was either difficult or impossible. Recently, I have been blessed with good viewing and the financial resources to purchase some modest telescopes. I also have access to a Takahashi Epsilon-200 astrograph, which I use to produce most of my images.
The imaging bug bit me because of a mushroom.
Yes, a mushroom.
One evening while working in the yard I happened across a very interesting looking mushroom. I went into the house and got a point-and-shoot camera (a Canon PowerShot A590 IS) and took the following picture:
I posted it here because I still haven't identified what kind it is. If you happen to know, please post a comment! Here is another image:
Anyway, as I was walking back toward the house I saw the moon and took a snapshot of it. Then the proverbial light went on: I could take a close-up image of the moon if I hold the camera up to the eyepiece of my telescope! I rushed inside, grabbed my scope, set everything up and started taking pictures. It worked! Here is the best one that I got from that evening:
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| Moon - September 4, 2008 |
I still like to do visual observation, of course. I'm perfectly content to sit in a dark field for the better part of a night looking at faint fuzzies up in the sky. Imaging, however, lets me see things that I cannot see with the naked eye. There is a LOT to see. The Universe is so vast and contains so many wonders that it would not be possible to see everything within a lifetime.
I intend to post a bunch of my favorite astroimages over the next few weeks. After that, I will post images as I obtain them.
I'm new to this whole blogging thing, so please bear with me until I get my blog legs. I've shied away from it for a long time because, in part, I felt that since I am a web developer by trade that I should have a totally awesome web site and would never need to resort to using some kind of page generator, like a blog. I finally came to the conclusion that my personal web site, theglasgowfamily.org, would probably never be everything that I wanted it to be because I simply don't have the time and energy to do everything I want to with it.
Not that I intend to completely drop the web site, mind you. I still have big plans for it. But those plans have shifted just a bit since I have now relented to maintaining a blog.
Also, I will be working on the layout of the blog from time to time. I noticed that Blogger lets you modify your blog's CSS. That should be fun!
OK...long post over... Enjoy!
