High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Steve Mandel is an American communications coach for professional executives the founder and the president of the Mandel Communications company, which aims to teach effective communication and public speaking.He is also a keen amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. He owns a small observatory, called Hidden Valley Observatory, in Soquel, California. He has been acknowledged especially for his wide-field photographs of the Milky Way nebulae and for public outreach.Steve Mandel's interest in astrophotography grew in the 1970s.