Jay's interest in astronomy was lit by the space race of the sixties. For example, while live televised images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic lunar walk were flickering on our family television, he recalls rushing into the backyard with my 2.5 inch refractor in hopes of glimpsing their landing site on the moon.  COSMOS, Carl Sagan's epic thirteen part PBS series further fanned the flames of his enthusiasm and ultimately led to the purchase of Meade's original SCT shortly thereafter. Many other telescopes followed and by the time of Halley's Comet's most recent passing, he had learned to take manually guided photographs through a telescope with a 35mm film SLR camera. Unfortunately, family, kids, career and expenses turned me into a spectator as amateur astronomy converted from film to CCD during the 1990's.

However, Jay's fascination with imaging was rekindled during an un-planned visit to personal websites filled with fantastic CCD pictures by many highly regarded imagers like Russell Croman and Adam Block, but it was the striking pictures of Robert Gendler that ultimately inspired him to re-engage with this aspect of the hobby. So, after many months of contending with serious light pollution from his San Jose, California backyard, he began exposing pictures with remotely controlled instruments located under very dark skies in New Mexico and near Melbourne, Australia, a method that he is still using today.

Jay's MWAIC Presentation will be An Eye Candy Recipe.
He explains:

Camera

• SBIG STL-11000

Telescope

• RCOS 20-inch on a Paramount ME
  

Software

• CCDSoft
• Maxim DL
• Photoshop CS2

Website

• http://www.cosmotography.com/