Hi all,
I'd just like to take the time to introduce myself here - I hope to be a contributor as time goes on.
I've always in love with astronomy - back before I can even remember, I used to leaf through this book...
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x0/x743.jpg
...so that it was falling to bits before I can even remember, and I could list the planets in order from the Sun when I was about 5 y.o. I took to physics naturally and so pushed through to get a bachelors degree with an Astrophysics final year subject at Adelaide Uni (class of 1990, for any comrades out there).
I didnt follow thru with uni studies, instead wanted to get into finance and make a million (stupid me...), and I still work in the financial field toying with equities, derivatives and that sort of thing.
Anyway, sort of didn't think much about astonomy over the 20 odd years since then - being distracted with career, girls, babies, etc - and never had a decent telescope until my wife entered a $2 draw to win a Celestron Nexstar 4SE and subsequently won it for me (I love her heaps!).
A little telescope but it was enough to whet my appetite - although the small aperture isnt great for anything less than about magnitude 8, it shows clearly Jupiter, Saturn, some nice star clusters and a distinct blue colour around what the Goto computer said was the Saturn Nebula. Galaxies are pretty much a barely visible smudge however.
I'm looking forward to somehow laying my mits on a larger telescope in future (as large as I can afford, given a Sydney mortgage and the constraints of fitting it in a Holden Astra) and joining up with a club to rediscover an interest that has been pretty dormant for quite a while.
Hope to meet some of you one day in the flesh!
All the best
Graham
