The Trials of Astrophotography,
or, How I Discovered a Black Hole
Our guest speaker for the September general meeting will be Sean Shifflette, KG7RHH. Besides amateur radio, Sean is deeply involved in astronomy and astroimaging. He is what we would consider an advanced amateur astronomer. He is a scout leader both with the Catalina Council BSA and with Scout Troop 157. You may have met Sean at the RST Hamfests and at the ARRL Field Day exercise on Mount Bigelow. When Sean isn’t doing scouting, radio, or astronomy, you will find him at Raytheon tending to his duties as the location’s Factory Chief Engineer.
For his presentation, Sean will be discussing how he got started in astrophotography. His first image was captured using a standard film camera pointed at Comet Hale-Bopp in April 1997. Eventually as the technology advanced, so did Sean’s photography equipment and the telescopes that he uses today. His first challenges were stellar alignment and tracking.
Sean will discuss the technique used to extract the light to make the images. And just maybe he will talk costs associated with each of these instruments.