Thanks for visiting! My name is Dan, and I’ve had a keen interest in the night sky since I was young. I think growing up watching The X Files was one of the things that made me interested in what else could be out there!

I grew up in Frome, Somerset (UK), moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014 and lived there for five years (where I had the clearest night skies!), and now live in Andover, Hampshire (UK).

I bought my first telescope in 2002 (a Meade ETX90) from a small telescope shop in my hometown of Frome, MC2 Telescope Shop. The ETX90 was used for occasional glancing at the moon, the rings of Saturn, and I later started attaching a digital camera to capture some lunar photos.

Watching the Milky Way rise from Pigeon Point Lighthouse, 50 miles south of San Francisco.

I’ve been capturing photos of the night sky and Milky Way with my camera for several years, and took a much stronger interest in astronomy a few years ago after moving to the Bay Area.

I bought a Celestron EdgeHD 8″ in 2017, initially just using it for visual astronomy, but became more interested in astrophotography when I attached my full-frame Sony camera.

Wanting to get more serious with my astrophotography, I started using a dedicated astronomy camera later in 2017, a ZWO ASI1600MM-C, along with a ZWO filter wheel and LRGB filters.

Then in 2018 I was finding I wanted to capture more narrowband targets so invested in narrowband filters. I started processing my data using PixInsight, which I found incredibly difficult to use to start with, but I highly recommend the tutorials and articles offered by Light Vortex Astronomy.

Wanting a faster, wider-field scope, I added a HyperStar setup to my EdgeHD later in 2018, but switched to a dedicated wide-field astrophotography scope in 2019 – a Celestron RASA 11″ with a one-shot color camera, which has been so enjoyable to use. At the same time though, 2019 has seen the most cloudy nights since moving to the Bay Area – typical!

Then (above) and now (below), plus an average sized potato for scale! My original ETX90 scope, and new RASA 11″.

But one of the huge benefits of imaging with the RASA 11″ (at f/2.2) is how much light it can capture in such short periods of time – so when the weather is nice, I can often image 2 or 3 targets in one evening. I typically spend more time processing and editing the data than I did capturing it!

Through this website, I’ll be sharing some of my experiences using the RASA, along with the processed photos and insights in to the other astronomy products I use.

Clear skies!