Nights at Melinda Heights

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Welcome to Nights at Melinda Heights. I wanted a place for posting my images and after looking at a few options I decided to start this website. Most of the images on my website are captured from my house in a Bortle 6/7 zone. Dealing with light pollution is a major issue here but I want to show what is possible from these conditions. My goal is to provide a place to post my images, do brief write ups on various topics, show the equipment that I use, and to eventually add some tutorials on image capture and processing.
Each navigation tab will take you to a new page. The image pages are set up so you can click on an image to see an enlarged version. I try to do a brief write up for each image and the image and capture information can be found on the blog sidebar or on the blog page.
Astronomy has always been an interest and recently I tried some photography using a telescope. I was warned that I was in for a ride but ignored this advice and started down the long and winding (and expensive!) road to imaging. Looking back on the last 18 months I can honestly say I love this hobby. I was amazed early on by what a 10 second image of M42 could produce on a Meade ETX-125 and DSLR camera compared to visual observation. Seeing this pushed me further in to longer exposure times which in turn required a better mount. The better mount had me wanting a better imaging scope. The better imaging scope had me wanting a better camera. Many reading this will know where I am heading with this! Not to mention solar, lunar, or planetary imaging as these all require different imaging scopes and cameras (I have these too!). But to me it is all worth it. There is nothing like the trip to the high desert and dark skies, to meet some friends and sleep under the stars, and to eagerly wake up in the morning and check your results. The peaceful and quite weekend washes away the craziness of the work week and recharges the spirits. The back to nature aspect of this hobby keeps me relaxed, refreshed, and ready to hit Monday hard. My only regret is that I can’t devote more time to this hobby.
This site is a work in progress and bear with me as I have never created a website so any constructive comments are welcome!
Feel free to leave comments on the blog posts, the links are in the top right corner of this page. Your first comment will be reviewed but after that no more review.
JB