I've been interested in astronomy for a very long time- it was one of my first serious hobbies.   At a young age I begged and pleaded with my parents for a telescope. They encouraged me to do some research beforehand since $290 was a big commitment at the time.  We went to a few astronomy club meetings, talked to a number of amateur astronomers, and read as much information as I could find.  And then one day they finally bought me a 8" Dobsonian (like this, but smaller)- essentially a cardboard light "bucket" with no electronics.  The price was reasonable and I used this telescope for many years- I actually still have it.      I spent many Wisconsin winter nights outside looking at deep sky objects (nebulae, star clusters) and the planets.     When I spent time behind the eyepiece I never noticed that my knees were freezing to the ground or that my condensing breath would turn to ice crystals on my jacket and gloves.

Once Halley's Comet came around in 1986, I was totally hooked.  There's some special about seeing these things with your own eyes and working through all the technical challenges to get good seeing.

Since I was also interested in photography- and couldn't get my parents to stay outside and look at these dim, small, fuzzy objects when it was below zero- I decided I wanted to get into astrophotography.  I could then share what I saw with other people after the fact and also keep a record of my accomplishments.   This brought with it a whole new set of technical challenges.  In particular, my 8" mirror in a cardboard tube telescope, while optically great,  wouldn't be too useful for astrophotography.   You see, since the Earth is spinning on it's axis once per day, the night sky appears to rotate around the pole.   If you've ever seen a star trail photo (example below), you'll see what I mean:




The problem here is that these dim objects that you see through the telescope need really long exposures to register on film.   Even after a few seconds, the object may have completely moved out of field of view, turning your photograph into a blur.   The solution? A device called a clock drive.   A clock drive precisely turns the telescope around the pole to compensate for this motion.   Since it's not unheard of to have a multi-HOUR exposures, so this is a requirement for astrophotography

By now, we're into mid-1990s and we had started paying ourselves at work.  So, do some more research, point Netscape over to Ebay and buy a Meade LX-200 (sans the GPS and the other gadgets they've added in later years).  The first real computerized telescope.  It had a clock drive, a small embedded microcomputer, and the ability to connect to a host PC to automate your evening's observations.  Woo Hoo!  A geek's dream machine.

At the same time, another revolution was happening: CCD.    Charge Coupled Devices were replacing wet-chemistry film in astrophotography applications even quicker than in terristrial photography.   Purpose built CCD cameras have solid state cooling, special low-noise signal processing and digitizing electronics and a host computer to take digital images directly- no more screwing around with film.

This was great, and here is one of my first images:




I enjoyed this setup for a long time- but it was a real pain to use.   Like most technology, you spent all your time doing setup, careful calibration and configuration, etc. and then you only spend a fraction of the time on the actual pursuit.   Not much fun, but I did get some decent images.  Here's what the Ring Nebula looks like when you do it right. 

We're at 2000 now, the Internet company my friends and I founded (which was actually profitable, so don't laugh) was sold to Time Warner.    Time to find a house away from the city lights and construct a permanent setup so I can get back to the fun part of astronomy.   Light pollution was terrible where my parents lived anyway.

While I'm at it, lets make the observatory completely remote control and automated (another technical challenge) so I can use it from indoors during the winter (see how this has gone full circle?).