This photo shows 5 of Jupiters 63 moons. You can clearly see 3 on the left, one on the right, and if you look closely (or "blow up" the picture) you'll see one crossing of the planet's center-right.

This picture shows Jupiter's "Great Red Spot" in about the middle of the planet. This "storm has been raging on the surface for hundreds of years, but has recently begun fading. It may be completely gone in the next 20 years or so.

Depending on what ou count as a "ring", Saturn has 7 rings, each consisting of several thinner rings. It also has about 62 moons (and many "moonlets"-very small moons).

Depending on what ou count as a "ring", Saturn has 7 rings, each consisting of several thinner rings. It also has about 62 moons (and many "moonlets"-very small moons).

This is where I "set up shop" when we are at our house in La Quinta. It is across the street from our house and is a relatively dark area. Since there are no houses across the street from our house, this area works extremely well.

When it gets cold, I set up a table/computer in our garage and use it to control the computer across the street that is attached to the telescope. That way I can start a heater in the garage and keep working through most of the night.

This is a picture of my observatory in Colorado. It is offcially named "Copernicus Center". It houses my 14" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and related equipment.

I have a similar telecope (but no standalone observatory) in California.

Better view of telescope and front-mounted camera.

Telescope as viewed from the back.

Closed observatory (cover waiting to be put over the top of the dome).

This was the setup I first had in the driveway of our house that burned down in Castle Pines. Smaller telescope and more limited accessories, but a great learning environment.

Unfortunately, this setup didn't survive our house fire from 4/30/2018. While the smaller scope is great, easy to use, and easy to move, I haven't replaced it (yet). Some of the pictures on this website are from this telescope.

I took this photo with my Canon 70D from the patio of our home in CA. On 1/31/18 the moon was in a unique position. The earth's shadow was covering it, which gave it a reddish hue (the moon wasn't "red", but, like a rainbow, the outermost frequency of light is red).

The name given to the moon night was "Super" (because it was at its closest point to the earth), "Blue" (moons are called "blue" on the rare occasion there are 2 full moons in a month), and "Blood" (because of the eclipse wth the earth).

I took this time-lapse picture on our patio just for fun one night to show how the stars "travel" throughout the night. Of course, they don't move, it's just that they look that way as the earth turns on its axis. The very center of these concentric circles is, as always, the star Polaris...the North Star.

We are lucky in the Northern Hemishpere to have a star in such a location. In the Southern hemishere, there is no star that virtually doesn't move at any time during the year or anytime during the night. Early navigation in the Southern Hemisphere was more complicated.

The red/white "dashed" lights are airplanes going to/from Palm Springs, LA, San Diego, etc.

I took this picture (and the next one) on a trip we made to Hawaii. We were on the Big Island on a cloudless/moonless night. I took my Canon 70D outside, laid down on a nearby golf cart path, and used a tiny tripod I had to take these pictures. There are ways to get even better Milky Way pictures, but these snapshots are still interesting.

The brightest part of the Milky Way is actually center of the Milky Way disk. It has a tremendous number of stars, and, at the very center, a supermassive black hole.

Like the previous picture, this picture shows the center of the Milky Way (the brightest part) where Sagittarius A* lives...our supermassive black hole. This black hole is 4.6 million times larger than our sun, and it is 27,000 light years away.

The lights in the lower left are the lights from the city of Kona.

This photo shows 5 of Jupiters 63 moons. You can clearly see 3 on the left, one on the right, and if you look closely (or "blow up" the picture) you'll see one crossing of the planet's center-right.

This picture shows Jupiter's "Great Red Spot" in about the middle of the planet. This "storm has been raging on the surface for hundreds of years, but has recently begun fading. It may be completely gone in the next 20 years or so.

Depending on what ou count as a "ring", Saturn has 7 rings, each consisting of several thinner rings. It also has about 62 moons (and many "moonlets"-very small moons).

Depending on what ou count as a "ring", Saturn has 7 rings, each consisting of several thinner rings. It also has about 62 moons (and many "moonlets"-very small moons).

This is where I "set up shop" when we are at our house in La Quinta. It is across the street from our house and is a relatively dark area. Since there are no houses across the street from our house, this area works extremely well.

When it gets cold, I set up a table/computer in our garage and use it to control the computer across the street that is attached to the telescope. That way I can start a heater in the garage and keep working through most of the night.

This is a picture of my observatory in Colorado. It is offcially named "Copernicus Center". It houses my 14" Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and related equipment.

I have a similar telecope (but no standalone observatory) in California.

Better view of telescope and front-mounted camera.

Telescope as viewed from the back.

Closed observatory (cover waiting to be put over the top of the dome).

This was the setup I first had in the driveway of our house that burned down in Castle Pines. Smaller telescope and more limited accessories, but a great learning environment.

Unfortunately, this setup didn't survive our house fire from 4/30/2018. While the smaller scope is great, easy to use, and easy to move, I haven't replaced it (yet). Some of the pictures on this website are from this telescope.

I took this photo with my Canon 70D from the patio of our home in CA. On 1/31/18 the moon was in a unique position. The earth's shadow was covering it, which gave it a reddish hue (the moon wasn't "red", but, like a rainbow, the outermost frequency of light is red).

The name given to the moon night was "Super" (because it was at its closest point to the earth), "Blue" (moons are called "blue" on the rare occasion there are 2 full moons in a month), and "Blood" (because of the eclipse wth the earth).

I took this time-lapse picture on our patio just for fun one night to show how the stars "travel" throughout the night. Of course, they don't move, it's just that they look that way as the earth turns on its axis. The very center of these concentric circles is, as always, the star Polaris...the North Star.

We are lucky in the Northern Hemishpere to have a star in such a location. In the Southern hemishere, there is no star that virtually doesn't move at any time during the year or anytime during the night. Early navigation in the Southern Hemisphere was more complicated.

The red/white "dashed" lights are airplanes going to/from Palm Springs, LA, San Diego, etc.

I took this picture (and the next one) on a trip we made to Hawaii. We were on the Big Island on a cloudless/moonless night. I took my Canon 70D outside, laid down on a nearby golf cart path, and used a tiny tripod I had to take these pictures. There are ways to get even better Milky Way pictures, but these snapshots are still interesting.

The brightest part of the Milky Way is actually center of the Milky Way disk. It has a tremendous number of stars, and, at the very center, a supermassive black hole.

Like the previous picture, this picture shows the center of the Milky Way (the brightest part) where Sagittarius A* lives...our supermassive black hole. This black hole is 4.6 million times larger than our sun, and it is 27,000 light years away.

The lights in the lower left are the lights from the city of Kona.