Robert had an interest in space exploration since 1955 when he saw the George Pal movie "Conquest of Space" about a von Braun-style manned Mars expedition. He first tried his hand at lunar photography in 1959, but it was not until March of 1960 that he figured out how to do successful telescopic lunar astrophotography through a 4-inch Criterion reflector. At the time there were no popular "how-to" books about the subject and he had to engineer the techniques on his own. The advent of highly visible Earth satellites in August of 1960 led to stellar photography and the development of piggyback astrophotography techniques, again on his own for lack of popular instructive materials.
After serving in the Navy until 1970, Robert continued astrophotography adventures, now with advanced Nikon camera equipment. In 1975 he purchased a C-8 telescope (which is still his only telescope) and pursued wide-field deep sky and high resolution lunar photography. In 1977 he purchased a Celestron 8-inch Schmidt camera which he used until good films for it were no longer available. Today Robert uses a TeleVue TV-60is and IR-modified Canon 300D and considers it a replacement for the Schmidt camera. He still uses the 33-year old C-8 for lunar work with a DMK41 camera.
Robert has always considered himself more of a space historian than astronomer, and was at one time regarded as a good authority on the Communist-era Russian space program. To that end, he co-authored two books with Fritz Bronner, "Conquest of Space" (remember the influence of the George Pal movie <g>), and "The Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space Companion". In 1994, his book "The Superpower Space Race" was a well-regarded, if not one of the final, accounts of the scientific, technical, and political history of US/USSR unmanned lunar and planetary exploration up to the Clemintine mission to the Moon.
In 1996, Robert's work on a large manuscript about Mars exploration was interrupted by a chance encounter with Perry Remaklus at the Texas Star Party. At his urging, Robert began working on what became "Wide-Field Astrophotography", the final comprehensive book about film astrophotography released in 2000. This book was soon followed by the rise of affordable digital astrophotography and thus he wrote the first books on that subject, "Introduction to Digital Astrophotography", and "Introduction to Webcam Astrophotography", released in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Robert plans to finish the delayed Mars book as a retirement project in a few years.
Cameras
- Canon 300D - Hap Griffin modified for deep sky
- Canon 10D
- The Imaging Source DMK41 for lunar
Telescopes
- Tele Vue TV-60is for deep sky imaging
- Orion 100mm /f6 refractor for guiding with Atik 2HS webcam
- C-8 (1975 model) for lunar
Mounts
Software
- DSLRFocus
- GuideDog
- WcCtrl
- QFocus
- Deep Sky Stacker
- Photoshop PS3
- IC Capture
- RegiStax 4
Website
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