Who I am

My journey into astrophotography began as a young budding scientist interested in both astronomy and photography. Early attempts to photograph stars and constellations with home-built telescopes and equipment met with modest success. My journey ultimately led to a research career where I learned many of the necessary skills and eventually to science education as a high school science teacher and then museum educator. At the Museum of Science in Boston my secondary job involved operating the Museum Observatory.

Retirement from the Museum allowed me to devote more of my time to astro-photography and ultimately construct an observatory in my backyard, from which many of these images were made. The observatory can now be controlled remotely from inside my house, a huge advantage during New England winters. However, collecting image data is only part of the process of creating an astrophotograph. Specialized image processing software is used to bring out the very dimmest parts of the image and separate it from the overwhelming brightness of the stars. The result is an image that shows the dim fabric of space against the background (and foreground) of stars.

Beyond Our Vision is a visual journey from the earth, moon and planets to some not so familiar stars, then into the glowing nebulous clouds of gas and dust of our Milky Way galaxy. Finally it explores the distant galaxies of the universe beyond the Milky Way to spy a galaxy (M87) containing the first imaged black hole and another whose light took 1.3 billion years to reach us.