Dave Rager Photography

I’ve always been a space nut and grew up during the glory days of NASA and the moon landings when I was very young. Science and astronomy have always drawn me in to understand the world we live in and the universe around us. I was always reading books about space and loved the astrophotography images taken only by Earth bound telescopes at the time. Then the Hubble telescope was launched and brought even more spectacular views of the heavens. When my kids were young, I finally decided to share my interest with them and bought a 10” Dobsonian telescope. My expectations were high, but soon I learned that your eye will never give you the same views as very long exposures with cameras.

A couple years ago, I decided to jump in with both feet to learn astrophotography. The technology improvements over the last several years have brought us the ability to capture celestial objects in images that exceed those in the books I loved growing up. Here are some of my favorite images from that journey.