Ex Astris Photography

I am a software engineer who has spent the last 15 years of my career building massively parallel big-data analytics / data warehousing systems at a major tech company cloud service organization. But I’ve been passionate about astronomy and the universe ever since I got my first telescope at the age of 12 — a simple 3″ Newtonian reflector. I’ll never forget the thrill I felt the first time I saw Jupiter’s moons, or Saturn’s tiny cup-handles!

Growing up, I spent many long hours under the clear skies of rural eastern Kansas. At around 16 I scrounged up enough money to buy an 8″ mirror from Meade, along with other parts (diagonal secondary, focuser tube, eyepieces …), and with my dad’s help, installed it all into a heavy 10″ PVC tube and placed it on a home-made alt-azimuth mount (not motorized!). It was exciting to see Andromeda, Orion, and other DSOs visually — as well as a clearer view of Saturn’s rings and a few more of Jupiter’s moons. I built a stepper-motor control system and actually wrote the software to run equatorial motion on an altazimuth mount, but my mechanical engineering skills weren’t sufficient to figure out the gearing required to control my heavy DIY OTA, and eventually the scope was stored away.

I was inspired to pursue a degree in astrophysics while aiming for my dream career of shuttle astronaut. I never became an astrophysicist or astronaut — life tends to throw many twists and turns at you, and somewhere along the way I ended up with a bachelor’s degree in archaeology (?!?), a life and family in Brazil, and, strangely enough, a successful career in software development. But that’s another story.

Fast-forward *several* decades — which included 17 years living in Rio de Janeiro and now 15 years in Southern California. Over the course of my 35-year career as a software engineer, I’ve built all kinds of systems, ranging from microprocessor-based industrial controls to satellite monitoring and control systems, to database systems and consulting for some of the world’s largest companies.

During the pandemic lockdown, in the summer of 2020, I realized that it was time to rediscover my passion for the night sky: of course, thanks to supply chain problems, it wasn’t just toilet paper that was hard to find! My Celestron EdgeHD 9.25″ and CGEM II mount took 4 months before it finally arrived, in November, just 2 years ago. It was wonderful — I was very excited — and then I discovered that taking astro pictures with my Nikon commercial grade DSLR wasn’t really viable. (At least, not the kind of pictures that I wanted to take!). So I bought a used astro-modified DSLR. Then I discovered that astrophotography is hard! Especially with a big, long F/L scope. So I bought a “training scope” — a WO ZS73II APO refractor. Then I realized I needed a cooled camera. Then a cooled mono camera. Then a filter wheel. Then a mini-computer attached to the scope. Then …. so many things! And of course, there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits all” scope…. you can’t get by with just one!

And so it was, as time grinds on, my hobby gradually took over the dining room. Not long ago, Cristina, my wife and extremely supportive life partner, did a double take, glancing between the one, two, three scopes scattered around the room. “How many telescopes do you have, anyway???”.

Fortunately, she didn’t ask me how much money I have spent on them!