A little bit about ourselves.....

We are a small, actually, very small group of people in Midland, Ontario, Canada, who simply find a common hobby in astronomy. We are not an actual "Club" per say because that would entail meetings and organization and rules, etc. We're kind of against all the trappings of organization. If it's clear, we go out. If it's a weekend, we'll bring a couple of beers with us.

We work for one of Canada's premier optics manufacturers building lenses for such customers as IMAX, PANAVISION and Leica. Being so exposed to optics we thought it would be kind of interesting to just make our own telescopes. It doesn't hurt to be located on the Huronia peninsula which is pretty much surrounded by Georgian Bay and fairly dark skies. The first telescopes we each made were 6" reflectors.  Since then we all progressed to bigger and better telescopes. Some made, some purchased. We realized at an early stage that we needed a significant mount to do any real astrophotography. After pricing the currently available mounts, we reviewed our options and decided to manufacture our own mounts. There is a description of our DIY telescope mounts in the Equipment page of this web site.  

Lately we've been trying our hand at astrophotography and meeting with some success.  Astrophotography takes an incredible amount of patience and perseverance, and we've been hard at it seriously for about four years, overcoming one obstacle at a time. We first tried video astrophotography with a Stellacam EX and though it was fun it couldn't produce the results we were after. We then switched to digital cameras and our results improved. Chris and Udo use the venerable Nikon Coolpix 4500 and I use the Canon Rebel XT unmodified. This website was put together to relay our trials and tribulations and showcase our successes. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Sincerely,

Darrell for the Midland Stargazers