I started getting into astrophotography in August 2000. Shortly before a vacation on the Canary Island of La Palma, I hastily bought an Intes MK66 optics and a Vixen GP mount. A used Starlight XPress MX512 CCD camera with a tiny sensor completed the equipment. I actually dragged all the stuff with me to La Palma and produced my very first astro images there.

On the flight I studied the book "The Art and Science of CCD Astronomy" and while looking at the example photos I dreamed of how great it would be if one day a photo I had made was published in a book. Looking back, it was all pretty crazy, because I shouldn't have been surprised if the whole effort had been in vain and I hadn't brought home any useful pictures at all.

But somehow everything worked more or less exactly as I had theoretically imagined (apart from the effect of the mosquito spray) and I managed to get quite a few nice shots of deep sky objects directly from the terrace of the holiday resort in Charco Verde.

Back in Germany I uploaded the images to my homepage and a few months later I received a request from Ron Wodaski via email from the USA. He asked me for permission to include four of my images in his outstanding book "The New CCD Astronomy". The dream had come true...