Welcome to the Heavenly View, a website devoted to my passion for astronomy and astro-imaging! Astronomy for the amateur has progressed immensely to the point where today's humble attempts at astro-imaging exceed the professional results of the largest observatories of 20 years ago. This website was created to provide the viewer some idea of what can be achieved by a typical amateur (that's me!) utilizing the modest equipment available today. Costs for computerized telescopes and cooled-ccd cameras, once prohibitive in expense, are now affordable commodity electronics. Digital cameras and inexpensive webcams, owned by many, are also being coupled to all varieties of telescopes to generate surprisingly excellent images of planets and brighter deepsky objects. This provides an inexpensive platform to begin imaging of the heavens! I hope you enjoy the images on this site as much as I've enjoyed taking them. Please email me if you have any questions or comments that you would like to make. - The introductory image is of M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy. The image was taken with a 10" homebuilt Newtonian at f/4.6 with a Starlight Xpress SXV-M25 6.1 megapixel camera at Chiefland, FL.

Latest News:

January 2010: Made my first adapter for the H36 on my new 10x22 lathe

Summer 2009: Images used in an iPhone apps for Picture of the Day

Spring 2008: Featured person in Amateur Astronomy magazine ("Star People")

February 2008: Had new weights for my Unitron 160 photo-eq made (counterbalance and clock drive)

December 2007: Back home in Florida after 2 years in Pennsylvania!!

Fall 2007: Wrote 2 articles for "Astro-Insight" magazine

Fall 2007: Cover picture on "Astro-Insight" magazine (Rosette Nebula)

October 2007: New page setup for SXVF-H36 images

August 2007: First light with an SXVF-H36 Prototype camera

July 2007: Gave an invited talk on "Imaging with a One-Shot Color Camera" at the Midwest Astro-Imaging Conference (MAIC) in Chicago as part of EPOCH2007

May 2007: Gave an invited talk on "Imaging and Processing with a One-Shot Color Camera" at the Cherry Springs Star Party

May 2007: First light for the 12.5" Newt

April 2007: Gave an invited talk on "Imaging and Processing with a One-Shot Color Camera" at the NEAIC, which was the imaging conference held the 2 days prior to the NEAF weekend.

Jan 2007: The 12.5" f/4 Newt has been completed (except for baffling). As of May 4th, still waiting for first light!

July 2006: Work on a 12.5" f/4 newt has started. Parts have been assembled, now construction begins.

May 2006: A full page image of M42 was printed in the Gallery section of the May 2006 issue of Sky and Telescope!

April 2006: An image I took of the Lagoon Nebula was printed in the Gallery section of the April 2006 issue of Sky and Telescope!

July 2005: Completed the webpages on a 4" Unitron photoequatorial I picked up years earlier. The images show my first attempt at finally assembling the scope (see under equipment)

February 2005: Completed the webpages on a 10" f/4 homebuilt Newtonian that I now use as my primary imaging scope. The Newt features a Royce mirror and Protostar secondary, with Feathertouch focuser. A 12.5" f/4 is in the works (later 2006)

Site best viewed at 1280x1024 resolution. All images used within this website are subject to copyright laws. Use of any image requires written permission from the owner of this site (me!).