Larry Matney
Larry is a long time landscape and wildlife photographer. In 2016 he purchased his first
telescope and started visual astronomy. A couple of years later he started to take
photographs with the telescope.
He now has several telescopes and also uses Nikon prime lenses as shorter telescopes to
obtain wide fields of view. They range in focal length from 50mm to 1625mm. He has a ZWO
AM5 mount and a Celestron CGEM DX mount. For visual use he has an assortment of
eyepieces.
For normal astrophotography he uses an unmodified Nikon D800e or a monochrome ZWO
ASI2600mm Pro camera with LRGB and narrowband filters (Ha, OIII, SII) to produce color
images. For guiding he uses an off axis guider with a ZWO ASI174mm Mini camera, or a
50mm f4.2 guide scope with a ZWO ASI120mm-S camera.
He recently started doing Solar imaging. This is mostly done with a DayStar Quark Ha filter
and a PlayerOne Apollo M Max camera on a 103mm or 150mm refractor.
He uses NINA with PHD2 for astrophotography imaging sessions, and SharpCap for Solar
sessions. For post processing he primarily uses Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and Adobe
Photoshop.
Amin Patani
Amin’s foray into astrophotography began with capturing the comet Neowise with a point and shoot camera! His setup has expanded to two scopes (73mm refractor and 8” Celestron Edge with Hyperstar), a couple of Astro cameras (ASI2600MM and ASI2600MC) with a number of narrowband and broadband filters. He uses the iOptro CEM70G mount and has an off-axis guider with ASI174 Mini guide camera. He has also imaged with different Canon lenses ranging from 40mm to 400mm. He has used ASIAir computer for astroimaging but has switched over to using a mini PC. He uses both SiRiL and DSS for pre-processing of images and uses primarily Photoshop for post processing. His current challenge is to get proficient with long focal length imaging and learn planetary and solar photography.
Chuck Willford
Chuck started Astro Photography during Covid. He went thru the 4 stages of change to end up with low end in terms of cost of the next to the last stage of high end professional gear. Self taught with the great help of Google search. And my new friends at West Valley Astronomy.
Mount: ZWO AM5 mount
Imaging Scope: Askar PHQ80 Refractor, 600mm FL, 80mm aperture, f/7.5
Guiding Scope: WO 200 mm fl, 50mm aperture, f/4
Imaging Camera: ASI 2600 MC Pro OSC
Guiding Camera: ZWO ASI120 mm Mini
Controller & S/W: ZWO ASIAIR Plus
Video Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab S4
Editing PC: Homemade PC – i9 processor, 96 MB ram, 6 TB storage
Editing S/W: Siril, Photoshop, Topaz De Noise AI, various plugins
Thomas Mastrocinque
Thomas learned an appreciation for naked eye stargazing during his time in the military where he spent many a night under dark skies. He started visual astronomy around 2010 with an inexpensive 70mm Celestron refractor. Aperture fever soon took hold and he was forced to purchase a 10” Orion DOB to keep the illness at bay. Eventually this wasn’t enough so he bought a 16” Explorer Scientific DOB, which truly showed him the wonders of the universe. He continued with visual astronomy until April of 2021 when he decided to experiment with astrophotography.
After selling off all of his visual gear to fund this new venture, Thomas purchased an AVX mount, a 6” TPO Newt, and a Canon T3i. Realizing he would never get the results he pined for, he began slowly upgrading. Today Thomas owns an EQ6-R Pro mount and a variety of scopes. His scopes include the RedCat51, the Meade 70mm Quad, an Explorer Scientific 8” Imaging Newt, and a 130mm TS Optics Photoline. His cameras include the ZWO ASI533MC-Pro and the ASI2600MC-Pro.
Thomas will sometimes use NINA and PHD2, but for most casual AP he prefers the ease of the ZWO ASIair system, which has all the acquisition software built-in. For stacking he uses AstroPixelProcessor and then uses StarTools for post processing. Final tweaks are done in Affinity Photo when needed.
Thomas is always eager to learn more about our hobby and is most appreciative to everyone who has helped him get to where he is today.
Hal Szklinski
Hal has been a nature and landscape photographer for a long time. Once he moved to Verrado in 2020, he started night photography with a friend using an old Nikon camera for general night sky, Milky Way, Star Trails, Moon and meteor photos. He then purchased his first Celestron NexStar 6SE (6”) Schmidt-Cassegrain, Computerized Go-To, Alt-Az, telescope in 2021. He has several telescope objective lenses from 7mm thru 32mm, and also a ZWO ASI178MC camera which is connected to a laptop using SharpCap software used for the Planets. Photoshop is used for all post processing. Last year he upgraded his old camera to a new Nikon Z7ii with 14mm thru 300mm lenses, which are still used for general night sky photography, but can also be connected directly to the telescope. His goal is to learn to capture Deep Sky Objects.
