WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 53I had gone from recording with my eyes and
memory to recording with a camera, and
the difference between what I could see and
what the camera could see fed my passion.
I was determined to continue and
improve. I soon purchased a Santa Barbara
Instrument Group (SBIG) ST-237 CCD
camera and embarked on my digital-
imaging journey. But it wasn’t until much
later, after several changes in equipment,
that I finally began to produce images that
showed the celestial details I desired in my
work — the kind of details that resembled
the universe of the books.
Dusty dreams
My imaging was bound to keep evolving. I
purchased a 12-inch Astro Systeme Austria
N12 f/3.8 corrected Newtonian astrograph
— a telescope made specifically for astropho-
tography, with a wide field of view (FOV)
and a f lat, undistorted projection onto the
focal plane, where the projection of the target
comes into focus. This I combined with an
SBIG STL-11000M CCD camera.
The Iris Nebula (NGC 7023, top center) first inspired the author to create portraits of dusty, dark places in the night sky. In the constellation Cepheus, dusty neb-
ular material surrounds a massive, hot star in its formative years. Central filaments of cosmic dust glow with a red photoluminesence as dust grains effectively
convert the star’s invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. The dominant color of the nebula, however, is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting
starlight. (4.2-inch Takahashi FSQ-106 refractor at f/5, 14.25 hours of exposure through an SBIG STL-11000M CCD camera)
Immediately after discovering the dark nebulosity surrounding NGC 7023, the author set his sights
on van den Bergh 152 (upper left). The object glows with the characteristic blue color of reflection
nebulae at the end of a dusty curtain of dark gas and dust. It lies about 1,400 light-years away, along the
northern Milky Way in Cepheus. Scientists think ultraviolet light from a nearby embedded sun is causing
a dim reddish luminescence in the nebular dust. The entire complex is a huge molecular cloud that will
form stars. (12-inch Astro Systeme Austria N12 astrograph at f/3.5, 7 hours of exposure through an SBIG
STL-11000M CCD camera)