About the Cover Image

You can't see me, but I'm there right on the cover. This photo was taken by Tony Hallas while a bunch of us were together observing in southeast Arizona. The trip, put together by Herb York of Anacortes Telescope, included a large proportion of CCD imagers. The red glow you see is from LED flashlights. Tony walked around "painting" the scopes and work spaces with additional red light.

The bright white glowing objects are the laptops used by the CCD imagers. You can see some motion in the left foreground, which was a red flashlight around someone's neck; it bounced as they walked. If you look very closely at lower left, you can see someone's foot was imaged repeatedly. <g>

The sky image was combined with the "painted scopes" image to create the final composition. That is the Sagitarius star cloud up there, with a host of delightful imaging opportunities in it!

Oh -- my laptop screen is the one in the center. I was imaging with my Takahashi FC-125 refractor on an Astro-Physics 600 GTO mount. I was using an SBIG ST-8E camera and Maxim/DL software to control the camera.

- Ron Wodaski