G'day Astro junkies!
After 30 years of pushing 3-30 inch scopes around the Northern Hemisphere
i have seen Everything, again & again & again!
i did back to back astro events for 34 days in the Andes. Here i saw the entire Milky Way at 12,500 feet elevation, under the darkest & driest skies on the planet. To see Sag. & Sco. at the Zenith, the LMC & SMC etc... let me know without a doubt it was time to Go South!
http://www.anzaobservatory.com/gosouth.html
So after my last observatory became over-run by "progress", i knew it was
time to complete my goal of seeing as many, if not all the NGC catalog.
Always striving for the best in life i had to have an observatory
there, in the Andes. There was a plan, that is dragging now, to build
one in Bolivia. This site, on the shores of Lake Titicaca are the
finest in the world because of the lake's "seeing-cells". BUT
Bolivia is Bolivia, if you get my drift. A great place to visit
but not a place to do business.
my 2nd choice, of course was Chile. Again great place to visit
but no place for an American to live. So here i am, heading
to Australia this year.
my reason for joining your forum is to make connections with
the amateur astronomers in Australia. To get some good advice
on just where i can find:
#1. A well established club that has a dark site that i can
build an observatory/apartment on and use 3-6 months out of
the year. i would let the club use it while i was & was not
there for a win win deal.
#2. Find a dark site with a well established B & B and do
the same.
#3. Find a reasonable 2nd home in a rural dark area, build
the observatory with apartment and have the home rented
out year around. They could be my care-takers.
#4. Find a highly trustworthy amateur and work with them for
a win win deal.
i think that's in just about the order of preference to my
idea of a workable situation that i could live with.
The 2 places now on my list to check out are Alice Springs and Coonabarabran. i like Alice (of course way out of town) a little more just for the fact it's -23 deg or so, and i would get to still see most of the sky.
If you have any suggestions on how & where to bring my observatory
down south please let me know.
Here is the list of optics for this project:
28 inch StarMaster w/GOTO
17 1/2 inch Newt/Dob. w/DSC
C-14 w/Argo Navis
20 x 125 mm Astro binoculars on a heavy duty fork mount
Plus 7 x 50s, 11 x 80s, & 25 X 100s binoculars......
a large Astronomy Atlas collection, Astro. library, computers
etc, etc.....
Everything you would expect in a serious amateur astronomers
observatory!
Sincerely, Lance aka "abellhunter"