I had just started using the 3” reflector telescope my parents had given my sister and me for Christmas. My best friend had a small refractor telescope and we spent many summer nights camped out in our backyards viewing the planets, naming the constellations and looking for meteors. Thus was the start of my life long avocation in Astronomy.

At university I studied Electrical Engineering and after starting my career I bought my first “real” telescope, a 13” Coulter Odyssey Dobsonian telescope. From my backyard in suburban St. Louis I spotted Halley’s Comet, studied deep sky objects and viewed all of the planets including Pluto. I was astounded when my dad and I were able to spend a handful of consecutive nights carefully viewing Pluto’s slow traverse through a star field during its conjunction with a bright star.

Career, family and community obligations paused my astronomy hobby for a few decades until the great solar eclipse in August 2017. The path of the full eclipse passed over St. Louis and the experience was cathartic. My parents had left me a small inheritance and to honor how they had inspired me to be inquisitive and explore the universe I decided to dive back into my favorite hobby. I purchased a large refractor, a higher end GoTo telescope mount and a CMOS camera and started the LONG journey into deep sky astrophotography.

I joined the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri (ASEM) and learned much from the excellent astrophotographers in the society who are very generous with their time and expertise. Five of us pooled our resources together and installed 2 shared telescopes at Dark Sky New Mexico, a “telescope ranch” near Animas, NM.