About

My journey into the world of astronomy started many years ago, while watching Patrick Moore late at night, on his BBC programme, The Sky at Night. Like most people in the West, I was also fascinated by the space race and the first moon landing. The distance involved seemed enormous to me, until I realised just how insignificant it is, compared to the vastness of space.

Seeing the first Hubble images and the fantastic objects out there in the universe, was the one thing that really grabbed my attention and my dreams of one day capturing such images myself. That was to come in 2006, when I bought my first telescope, the Meade ETX 70. My first glimpse of the moon was a fantastic experience, then onto other beautiful objects like the Orion Nebula, M13, Albireo and many more fascinating objects.

I had the ETX70 for around a year, before I decided to enter the world of Astrophotography. My first purchase was a Skywatcher EQ6, followed by a modified DSLR and a Newtonian telescope from Orion Optics in the UK. Of course I made the classic mistake of thinking bigger was better. The scope I bought was a 300mm f4 monster. Visually it was fantastic, but for photography and my non existant experience, my images were a disaster. Polar alignment was a mystery to me, guiding was done by a primitive webcam setup from Shoestring Astronomy.

At that time, information, unlike today, was very sparse on the internet. So it was a struggle to capture any decent images. After struggling with the EQ6 and huge Newtonian, I purchased a Skywatcher ED80, which I still use today for imaging. The scope has been a fantastic servant to me. 2 years ago I bought it's bigger brother, the Skywatcher Esprit 120 and my first cooled dedicated astro camera from ZWO. Those purchases, along with filters and autofocusers, really changed the game for me.