Beginnings

In 2007, I was lucky enough to have access to a pretty nice telescope. This was a 16 inch reflector, equipped with a CCD camera, and a computerized mount to track stars.

For a few months, I spent many late nights taking images, mostly of galaxies. I didn’t entirely know what I was doing, and it shows. These certainly aren’t going to win any prizes. Looks like I didn’t really know how to take calibration frames. Instead of automated stacking, I remember having to manually line up stars on a per-image basis. And I had no really post-processing software. I remember having a little UI with sliders to weight the color channels, and I think that was about it.

But I still get a kick out of these photos. Not bad for a kid back in 2007!