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 reso lution 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 34-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 400D - 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
- DSLRlite to control the 400D
- GuideDog
- WcCtrl
- QFocus
- Deep Sky Stacker
- Photoshop PS3
- IC Capture
- RegiStax 4
Website
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