WELCOME to the Cherry Mountain Observatory and David Plesko's astronomy images.
Cherry Mountain Observatory is a fully automated, robotic observatory located outside
of Fredericksburg, Texas. The observatory is focused on advanced astro-imaging and
visual exploration using leading edge technologies and approaches. Our goal is to
leverage best-of-breed hardware and software products to maximize data and imaging
quality through manual and automated data gathering techniques. We continually
research and revise our approaches and methodologies as well as the hardware and
software utilized in powering the Cherry Mountain Observatory.

UPDATE Summer 2008: We are now providing Internet-based remote access for rental of telescope time on our full combination of Meade LX200R 10”, Televue NP101is and 127is APOs, and RCOS 14.5” Carbon Truss Ritchey Chretien Telescopes on either our Paramount ME mounts, or in certain configurations on our Atlas EQ-G. Each scope can be configured with either our SBIG ST-4000XCM One Shot Color, STL11000-M (C, LRGB and narrowband filters), or Mallincam Color Hyper Plus CCD cameras for the purpose of deep-sky imaging (long focal length or wide-field) or remote video astronomy. Our skies are dark (average of 21.4 mags/arc sec2 on the SQM), transparent, and provide excellent seeing (average 1.4 arc sec, with 1 arc sec common). Please see our RENT SCOPES page for details.

This homepage is dedicated to the images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, arguably the most important advancement in astronomy since the invention of Galileo’s original telescope almost 500 years ago.