Some 10 years ago I began to browse and surf for information on how to get my own telescope � well by 1999 I was lugging out my 10″ Meade LX200 to my backyard and happily looking at the clusters and nebulae in Sagittarius and Scorpio, the Orion Nebulae, and other sky treasures that, before getting a scope, I could only see at Joshua Tree National Park star parties.

Now I own a home on a 1 and 1/4 acre tract just 1 mile from the northern border of the Joshua Tree park and can look through that same LX200 (though now easily wheeled in an out of the garage on JMI Wheeley Bars� ) under some of the darkest skies anywhere. Just hunting for objects to look at using star charts and monthly astronomy magazines is satisfying enough. But I also want to image. For now I’m going to limit myself to webcams for the planets, piggy-backing my Canon 10D and, when I get the drift-align, polar alignment technique down, I’ll try some prime focus. But, I think I will wait to build my permanent observatory before trying anything more ambitious. Why? Because to do good astroimaging you need very precise polar alignment and having to polar align everytime I wheel out my scope is just too much of a hassle.

We’ll see. I’m a few years away from building the observatory.

In a few days I’ll upload a gallery of images I took the other night learning to use my SBIG STV�. I plan to use the STV primarily for autoguiding when I use my Canon 10D at prime focus. But it can also do some low resolution imaging of its own (black and white). Using it in “Track & Accumulate” mode Monday evening (’til 3 in the a.m.) I got some interesting images of M13, M8, M27, and M51. As soon as I process them in ImagesPlus and Photoshop, I’ll share the results.

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