When I was twelve I purchased by first telescope, a battered 2.4 inch Tasco refractor for the staggering amount of $10.  In high school I built a larger refractor with an A. Jaegers 4 inch objective (miss that scope) and I made my first attempts at lunar and planetary astrophtography.  Results were anything but exciting.  In the early 70's I purchased the 10 inch f/6 Cave Astrola and again gave astrophotography of the moon and planets a go.  Some results were pretty good but on the whole I was wasting a lot of time and film. 

In 1998 I came upon Steve Massey's and Rod Mollise's web sites which contained incredible lunar and planetary images captured with surveillance cameras and camcorders.  With tips and encouragement from both of them I started imaging with a Supercircuit's PC23C monochrome video surveillance camera.  From the very start I was producing images that were far superior to the best photos I had made with film.

At the end of 1999 I purchased an Astrovid 2000 astronomical video camera.  This further improved my results as the Astrovid has manual controls for shutter, gain and gamma along with a larger, more sensitive CCD chip.

Both my telescopes have proven to be excellent for video imaging as the images below demonstrate.  The Intes-Micro Alter 603 f/10 Maksutov-Cassegrain was purchased in early 1999 and has proven to be an outstanding performer for it's modest aperture and compact size.

In early 1999 I helped to establish the VIDEOASTRO E-mail discussion group along with Rod Mollise and a few others that had been clouding up the waters of the SHALLOW-SKY list with discussions on video imaging.  Shortly after I established the VIDEOASTRO web site which I still maintain.

The VIDEOASTRO group has been largely responsible for my rapid progress in developing video imaging techniques and image processing skills.  The group, now numbering over 500, represents a significant number of countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe.  Many members are veteran video imagers along with several valuable video professionals -- the list is a wealth of information.  Thanks guys!

All imaging with the Astrovid is done with eyepiece projection using either an 18mm Ortho or a 21mm Plossl.  Video is recorded to a Hi8 video camcorder, frames are captured to computer with a Snappy frame grabber and image processed with Adobe Photo Shop.