I've been an amateur astronomer since I was around 11 years old. I had an uncle, a retired engineer, who had a small reflecting telescope, and when I saw Saturn for the first time I was hooked. Photography through a telescope came much later for me, and it was a very difficult undertaking in the film days. I remember taking some star shots to the drugstore for processing, and they told me they threw them away because there were just a bunch of white spots on them, and I should take better care to learn how to take pictures. Oh well.