About

My passion for astronomy dates back to childhood. As far as I can remember, it should dated the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986 and Tintin on the moon that I had read in the same time.

I started to practice with a 60-700 refractor telescope at the age of 12 years. I used it for 12 years. I still remember very well my first observation of the moon from the window of my room. What a shock seeing craters for the first time for real! My observations with this telescope was limited to the planets. I discovered Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

I replaced it by a 150/750 Newtonian telescope bought at Optique Unterlinden in Colmar with whom I made my first steps in deep sky. It was mounted on EQ5 equatorial mount equipped with the PIC-Astro A1 motorisation system.

I started astrophotography with a Kodak compact digital camera mounted in front of the eyepiece. Like visual observations, I began by the planets. I built a K2 CCD camera . Then I used a Canon EOS 350D digital single lens reflex.

When I purchased this Canon EOS 350D, I also thought to use it for photos of every day, as family, hiking, etc. Discovering the potential of a reflex, I took myself to the game and I started doing photography for making beautiful photos, tried at least. Without wishing to specialize in the beginning, my love for nature and hiking did that I turned naturally to landscape photography.

In 2007, I built my own telescope in complement to the one I’m using for photos. It is a “Strock” ultra-transportable Dobsonian telescope of 250mm diameter. Here is the story of this project.

In the beginning of 2010, after one year of reflexion, I purshased a Takahashi EM-200 USD3 equatorial mount and a FSQ-106ED refractor, a dream come true. The imager is a Canon EOS 1000D partialy unfiltered by myself. I removed the IR-cut filter, but I let the filter on the vibrant anti-dust system that also blocks the infrared but leaves past the H-alpha rai so important in astronomy. To this is added a William Optics 66SD ZenithStar refractor and starshoot autoguider camera for guiding.

In 2011, before leaving for my first trip to Iceland, I replace the 350D with a Canon EOS 7D. I also use in addition to the lens, that range from ultra-wide-angle to telephoto, graduated neutral density filter from Lee.