In August of 2020 with “new to me” equipment and a COVID-19 pandemic that kept me from traveling on vacation, I set about making a semi-permanent observatory in my back yard. I settled on an original concept for a micro observatory, I call “scope in a box”. Upon completion, the box was named StarCist. Star, of course for the bright points of light we gaze upon; and Cist, an ancient coffin or burial chamber or a box used in ancient Greece for sacred utensils. It allows me to quickly get into an imaging session so my sacred utensils can capture light that traveled millions of years, and preserve it for me to repeatedly gaze upon and enjoy as images or ghosts of the time, place, and substance…we call the UNIVERSE.
