In 2007 I made a major change to my equipment. I purchased a heavy duty equitorial mount called the EQ6 Pro and also purchased my first DSLR, the Canon Rebel XTi. This camera made the world of difference in terms of what I could image. Finally I could image anything that I wanted to and could actually attach this camera to my telescopes with the adapter I bought. For the most part I was playing around with exposure setting and seeing what kind of detail I could capture. These were long summer nights where I would wait till complete darkness which was roughly 12am and then proceed outside till around 4am or until I was satisfied with what I captured.
This photo was one of the better shots I got of the milky way. You need to enlarge this picture to make it out, however, I was still dissapointed with the detail I was getting with my digital elph. My camera did have a small sensor, a restricted ISO settings of 4oo, and a 15 second shutter time.
This was the first image that I captured of a shooting star. I actually never intended for it to happen since I randomly set up my camera on my tripod and set the exposure for 15 seconds. Sure enough when the exposure time was up, I looked at the image and there was the star trail. I was really excited. 
It all started one summer back in 2005 when I started playing around with my first digital camera I ever bought. It was a Canon Digital Elph S500. During my summer evenings I would go outside for a walk and look at the sky to see if there was anything interesting going on. This picture in particular is special to me because it was my first real widefield astrophoto. I captured this image of Venus and the crescent moon in my backyard with a small tripod.
