It was certainly a nice early xmas present when I received the email from Sean Walker just before xmas, asking to use two of my images for his upcoming article.
To be in the same article and featured amongst the legends such as Damian Peach, R. Jay GaBani, Ken Crawford and Robert Gendler is certainly an honour.
It's funny, because remembering back on 2008 part of me remembers it as a horrible year with terrible weather, limited imaging opportunities and generally bad seeing. My motivation for astronomy dropped to an all-time low and I didn't feel I achieved what I wanted to.
But then I remember some of the feature images I've been lucky enough to achieve (2 APOD's, as well as this S&T article), and I launched my personal site a few months ago, so I guess it has been a pretty good year. Interestingly, most of my best (or, what I consider my best) images in 2008 were the widefield type images with the Camera and lens, and not through the telescope.
Anyway it's inspired me to keep going in 2009 and do more photography and astrophotography.
It is really great to see Aussie amateurs feature on the world stage, especially in the Year of Astronomy, congratulations, no doubt this will encourage you to even greater heights.
I think that it is a just reward for the effort that you obviously put in.
It may also inspire others to try and emulate what you have done, has to be good for amateur astronomy in this country.
those 10 shots are 2 die for very nice 
