Astronomy and space have always  fascinated me . Memories of  growing up in heavily polluted New Delhi,  and experimenting with my home-made 5 feet long refractor with 3 inch objective ,and trying to observe  Jupiter in its full glory, are still with me. Our house in New  Delhi was at walking distance from Jantar Mantar .  Between 1727 and 1734 Maharajah Jai Singh II of Jaipur constructed five astronomical observatories in west central India. The observatories, or "Jantar Mantars" as they are commonly known, incorporate multiple buildings of unique form, each with a specialized function for astronomical measurements. We used to go for morning walks and marvel at these unique astronomical observatories.

Years passed by,  and I moved to Toronto, Canada in 1975. The intensity of  studies and domestic obligations kept me away from pursuing this wonderful hobby for many years.

I am a medical doctor by training graduating from  University Of Toronto & have been in private practice in Ontario.. I am married to my wonderful wife and have three lovely children . My Observatory is located in my backyard facing a Golf Course. This Golf course gives me  relatively dark sky conditions. There has been some recent urbanization of our neighborhood with resultant light pollution and worsening light domes.

Over the last year i have built an observatory dome with a fiberglass 10 foot dome from Technical Innovations. My observatory is fully automated and i control it from inside the house. I use ULTRA-VNC  for remote control and use IOGEAR Powerline network for Lan connectivity

 I also use an amazing program called  CCDautopilot  by CCDware that allows me to script the whole night of imaging and go to sleep! It is a Godsend and a must if you have to integrate a busy medical practice into this demanding hobby

My astrophotographs are baby-steps compared to other experts. I am still learning this new demanding hobby. I started taking astrophotographs in 2005 spring, so have a lot to learn

My first  telescope was  a Celestron C-8. I have also had Celestron GPS11 & C-14   Earlier attempts to do  astrophotography were met with disappointments due to the inherent weakness of the mount. My experience was ,as a result, limited to visual observations of the Cosmos. . Carl Segan's book Cosmos was also quite inspiring. Admiring astrophotographs by advanced astrphotographers like Matt Russell, Tony Hellas, John Smith, Robert Gendler, Russell Crowman ,Daniel Verschatse on their websites is a past-time for me.

Recently ,i have re-discovered my passion for Astronomy and Astrophotography and the result is this effort to present my pictures and techniques in this web format. Please excuse the presentation. I have very poor sky conditions and have very limited opportunities to image  I consider myself a beginner with excellent equipment.

I have acquired an excellent  Richey Chrétien design 16 inch reflector made by Brad Ernhorn of   RC optical systems of Flagstaff Arizona RCOPTICALS  The telescope is mounted on a German equatorial mount Paramount ME made by SOFTWARE BIsQUE. My secondary scope mounted on RCOS16 is Takahashi FSQ106. I use mainly SBIG CCD camera STL11000Mfor imaging.

I also have an Astro-Physics 1200GTO mount and Takahashi 152S refractor

I hope you enjoy browsing through .

Best Regards,

Arun

Feel free to drop me a line @ AKM at rogers dot com