Last night we had our monthly meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. This was a special meeting for me because I was one of six members of the AstroImage Special Interest Group who put on presentations.
The evening began with Steve Peterson giving a talk about imaging basics. Then Dean Ketelsen showed us some outstanding images of the Sun setting over Kitt Peak. Dean took the images from Mt. Lemon, far away, and he calculated the exact location and time to allow him to capture the setting Sun with the KP telescopes shadowed in the foreground. It was quite dramatic.
Alastair Simon then presented some great shots taken with both his 10" RCX and a 60mm refractor. After that, I gave my talk which was centered on the theme of being an AstroImage Addict. I had a lot of fun with the talk and I think it was enjoyed by the audience. This picture was taken by Larry during my talk, but the flash overpowered the presentation slide that was on the big screen behind me.
Next up was Michael Turner who has been imaging with a Televue refractor; he has some really nice images and did a nice job explaining image scale differences between his scope and the others. Victor Herrera gave a talk about using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey results, and the evening was rounded out by Dean Salman presenting some of his amazing images. Dean is definitely the Pro in the group and he gets published in the magazines regularly.
I'm fortunate to have the SIG members as mentors, they have helped and encouraged me to push my imaging along. If you've read my blog for long you know that I have slowly been solving problems, learning a lot, and hopefully improving, but I still have a way to go!
After the meeting several of us got together at Chili's, all-in-all a nice astronomy night.
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