About Me

Welcome to my website!

My name is Gregory Terrance and many of you know me as an owner at Finger Lakes Instrumentation, a manufacture of high-end CCD & CMOS cameras. I retired from FLI in 2021 and had the pleasure of working with ASA for the next year. Now that I am fully retired, I’ve re-booted my planetary imaging skills!

I’ve had a life-long fascination with astronomy that started before I could read. I can still recall leafing through astronomy books before I understood the words, and being mesmerized by the images of galaxies, nebula and planets. Those B&W images stirred emotions that have always stayed with me.

I was an avid lunar and planetary imager in the 1980’s & 1990’s. In those early days of imaging I used hyper-sensitized ‘Tech-Pan 2415‘ monochrome film to photograph the planets. In 1996 I switched to digital imaging using a CCD camera based on the tiny TC-211 sensor. My first images from the digital camera convinced me that my film days were over for planetary imaging.

Unfortunately my imaging time became limited and went to zero as business grew at FLI. The pause button was hit for nearly 22 years! All of that changed in fall of 2021 when I retired from FLI and subsequently installed a permanent backyard observatory. Since leaving FLI, I have re-entered the astronomy imaging community. So much has changed over the last two decades.

Today, ‘lucky-imaging’ using cameras based on Sony CMOS sensors rules king in all forms of solar system imaging. With the changes in hardware, I tackled the changes in acquisition techniques, software and processing. This website reflects my work during the season of 2022 and the refinement of techniques that occurred along the way. I hope that you enjoy the images and information!