A while back, I picked up a new hobby. I bought a telescope and a bunch of photography equipment and started channeling my inner scientist. Well, now I'm an amateur astronomer, and it's a great hobby. I'd suggest it to anyone with kids, or just a general interest. I've joined our local astronomy club and have been helping with outreach, and just love watching kids or even adults develop an interest. Plus, it's nice to know what you are looking at when you are outside late smoking a cigar.
That said, I've decided to share some of my results. Enjoy!

The Eagle Nebula
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Andromeda
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The Veil Nebula
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I have a few more photo's up at the Lackawanna Astronomical Society website gallery. Adam & Kerry's gallery. I also designed the website. Feel free to check it out or even show up for an event.
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nice! what's your setup?
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Those are very cool Adam! :-)
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Those are beautiful photos Adam. Nicely done. :-)
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Very nice shots there. Meade catadioptric, mebbe 6-inch?
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My main scope is a wedge mounted Celestron CPC-800, but a number of my shots are from a smaller William Optics 66 which is mounted on the CPC. I'm shooting with a Canon Rebel XS camera and I do my processing in Photoshop.


Here's a picture of the scope without all of my camera gear.
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YEah, what is your setup... how long did you unshutter to capture those? You must have nice equipment!
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Very cool! Thanks for sharing.
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:-)

Sorry, I got a dirty mind.
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cool pics!
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Each of the photo's were multiple exposures of 3 or 5 minutes. Andromeda was 7 shots x 5m, Veil 17 x 3m and I think the Eagle was about 15 x 5m.

The CPC is a great telescope. When I was getting into the hobby, I knew I wanted to do photography and that was the main reason I bought such a nice scope. But photography is very demanding of the equipment. You could buy a very nice scope for a lot less then I payed if you don't care to take photographs.
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Wow!!! Very impressive!!!

This is all I ever see:
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Nice photos.
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That is really awesome! :-) We used to have a decent telescope when I was a kid. Great hobby!
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Some awesome photos Adam. I spend a lot of time looking up into the stars when I am smoking outside at night.
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Wow, really nice. Those are cool shots. I really enjoyed my two astronomy classes in college. Spending evenings at the school's observatory in was fun.

I'd like to sit back with three fingers of Scotch and a good cigar, just pondering the universe. Hmmmm, that just became my plan for tonight.
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Sounds like a good plan!:-) Thanks for the comments guys!
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Keep the photos coming!

Thank you!
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Great job, Adam! Did some photographing myself back around 15 years ago. Used a Canon AE-1 with a shutter release cable. Used lots of high speed film. All the development was done at Walmart or one hour shops. Not the best, but I got some cool pics. Used a homemade barndoor unit.

I also have an 8" Orion Deep Space Explorer that's 12 years old. It's not driven, it's manual. You do get to see some cool stuff, though.

Great job on those photos!!! There's lots of cool stuff out there see. Congrats on the new hobby. It's a good one.
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It's funny how far the technology has come. I take all of the photo's from my laptop hooked up to the camera[actually two]. The CPC does the rest. I can sit in my living room and have the images pop up on the laptop.

When the astronomy club does outreach at state parks, they bring their manual telescope. They asked me to keep my eyes on one and someone told me Saturn moved out of the frame. I tried to help, but I realized I had no idea how to work the scope. No remote control? :-)

I can't imagine how tough it must have been to work with film. A lot of the clubmembers images in the gallery of the website I posted above were film. There are some amazing photo's in there.
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