This is the golden age of amateur astrophotography. Amateurs today can take more beautiful, detailed, and scientifically valuable images than the world’s biggest telescopes could just 30 years ago.
My lifelong adventure with astrophotography began when I was twelve years old. My first telescope was a 3-inch (75mm) reflector with a cardboard tube, plastic eyepieces, and a clip-on Brownie camera that captured 2.25″x2.25″ inch images on film.
I graduated to a 4.5″ (112mm) Tasco reflector the next year. My dad and I constructed a cardboard box to observe a projected image of the sun during the March 7, 1970 solar eclipse. During totality, I photographed the sun directly through the telescope’s eyepiece tube.
