Greetings from the Snowy Mountains

[Kunama]

A quick hello from the Snowys to introduce myself, I have been scouring this fantastic forum for a while and filling my head with all sorts of wonderful ideas for new ways to spend money, much to my wife's annoyance.

I am a raw beginner again in astronomy, having owned cheap refractors and reflectors in the distant past but now have some spare time for a pastime that will surely become an obsession.

(A special thanks to John "ausastronomer" for his time and advice with regard to equipment selection ! may the sky over Kiama always be clear !)

I look forward to asking a lot of 'stupid' questions so bear with me.

Cheers,
Matt @ Jindabyne

[Omaroo]

G'Day Matt - and welcome.

I have a place on Dry Plains Road out of Cooma that I sometimes set up my gear on and run a decent session from. Don't know if you're interested in photography at all, but that's what I do as apposed to visual. You're more than welcome to come up one day and see the "other" side. ;)

[Kunama]

Hello Chris,
I am at East Jindy, I too am interested in photography, but after shooting several hundred weddings, portraits etc have given up commercial work.

I am intending to do both visual and ap (to a modest extent -at least for now). I sold all my previous telescopes a long time ago and am now intending to get a 12" Lightbridge forvisual and a 4" or similar Apo refractor for ap.

I would be keen to catch up at Dry Plains sometime, nice dark sky around there.

Cheers,
Matt @ Jindabyne

[sheeny]

Welcome to IIS Matt!

Al.

[Ric]

Hi Matt and welcome to IIS.

I reckon you must get some awesome sky up that way.

[Kunama]

Thanks guys, I moved here so I could ski every day not even thinking of how little light pollution is here. For the first 2 years I would commute to Canberra from Jindy to work and at least once a week my car could be found on the side of the road in the dark with me lying on the bonnet with my binoculars, freezing my RRRR's off.

[Ric]

Blimey Matt, Jindabyne to Canberra and back, that some serious kilometres in a day. I do about 80 a day on the bike, breat in summer but a bit fresh in winter.

Just as well those clear skies make up for it.

Cheers

[Kunama]

It was quite a comfortable cruise in my BMW 635CSi Ric. Nothing compared to 1999 though, then I lived in Mooloolaba Queensland and worked at ACT Water Police a 3000klm drive every 3 weeks.

I have now given up work to focus on skiing, as the ski season is drawing to a close I will be learning all I can about astronomy.
I picked up a new scope today, thanks to a very generous deal with 'astroboy', I now have a mint condition Vixen R200SS with illuminated finder, extn tube, tele-extender, t mount, eyepieces etc sitting on my coffee table.

I have also sourced a Canon 50D and a Baader BCF filter to play with.

Now looking for a mount to suit.