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I was just 3.5 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped on to the lunar surface. Yet I can still vividly remember watching those ghostly monochrome images of humanity's first contact with another world, live on the TV screen. I think that was the spark which lighted my subsequent interest in space and astronomy.
I can trace my interest in astronomical observation to Christmas 1975 when my class teacher gave me a small illustrated Ladybird book The Stars and their Legends as a Christmas present. The other children received books on various other subjects and hobbies, but I will be forever thankful to the lovely Mrs Dutton for her gift -- otherwise I may have become a collector of lepidoptera or (even worse) a keen knitter!
Anyhow, in the winter of 1975-76 I spent the clear evenings identifying some of the various constellations mentioned in the book - it really was an absolute thrill to spot Orion the Hunter, Taurus the Bull and Lepus the Hare! Before long I wanted to see more of the heavens than my naked eye alone could discern. I spent my 1976 summer holiday savings on a small, rather imperfect hand-held telescope. What a joy it was to be able to see the Moon's craters, albeit rather indistinctly.
Around this time a friend allowed me to use his father's big binoculars to look at the Moon -- I was astounded at such a superb sight. I even imagined I had discovered an alien lunar base, but when I learned about the Moon in later years, my ET base turned out to be the diamond shaped Palus Somni (Marsh of Sleep).
In 1976 I made a Sun filter from of the tinted lenses of several pairs of cheap plastic sunglasses and subsequently burned the centre of the retina of my right eye when I tried to view the Sun through my telescope. To this day my eyesight is impaired at the centre of my right eye's field of view. The moral of this tale is obvious -- the Sun is a dangerous object. Looking at the Sun without the proper precautions will do to your sensitive retina what a pint of concentrated bleach will do to your stomach lining. Please, don't take any chances with your vision!
On 24 November 1980 I swung my 40 mm refractor towards the Orion Nebula and discerned the wispy nebulosity and the small cluster of stars within it known as the Trapezium. The following month in the wee small hours of 27 December 1980 I independently discovered Jupiter, the Galilean satellites and the ringed planet Saturn. I soon got into the habit of making observational drawings and have kept an astronomical observing log since the early days. I am currently approaching my 1,400th logged observation.
Like most of us, I've owned and used a variety of telescopes over the years. I currently have the late Harold Hill's 8-inch Dynamax SCT, which I bought from Harold a number of years ago and renovated, plus a Meade ETX-125 and Meade LX90. I've made several telescopes too, including grinding and polishing the mirrors of two 6-inch Newtonians and a 12-inch Newtonian. But for years (the first half of the 1980s) I solely used a Vixen 60 mm refractor, and I still use it from time to time on the Moon and Sun.
I began drawing the Moon's features on 15 May 1983 when I sketched the crater Cleomedes. It took a while to get into lunar observing, but gradually it became easier to be able to translate the view through the eyepiece to a sensible arrangement of graphite on paper. Since then I have spent many hundreds of hours flying over the glorious lunar surface. Nowadays I do much of my lunar drawing on my little PDA.
Way back in July 1984 I took on the role of Lunar Section Director of Britain's Society for Popular Astronomy. I still enjoy this tremendously. It's great to be able to help people get to know their way about the Moon and to observe it with a purpose. I produce the Lunar Section's journal Luna (which has been published since 1975).
I mainly observe from my garden in Rednal (on the southern edge of Birmingham, UK), with a variety of instruments, including a Meade ETX125 (127mm Maksutov) and a Meade LX90 (200mm SCT). My primary interests are observing and imaging the Moon and bright planets, but I occasionally like to 'go deep' during the dark of the Moon. I dabble in astrophotography using a DSLR and webcam, but find it much more thrilling to observe visually.
I thoroughly enjoy writing about astronomy, and over the years I've had hundreds of articles appear in a wide variety of publications. I edit three astronomy publications Luna the Journal of the SPA Lunar Section, the SPA News Circulars and Popular Astronomy magazine. In addition, I write and illustrate the monthly MoonWatch column in UK's Astronomy Now magazine and I'm an advisor and Q&A writer for BBC Sky at Night magazine.
I love writing and illustrating books, too! My published books include Collision: Earth! (Cassell, 1998), Moon Observer's Guide (Philips/Firefly, 2004), Solar System Observer's Guide (Philips/Firefly, 2006), The Moon, and How to Observe It (Springer, 2005), Need to Know? Stargazing (Collins, 2005) Need to Know? Universe (Collins, 2006).
My website is www.lunarobservers.com Here, I occasionally broadcast live webcasts using a variety of instruments and my ToUcam. Do pay the website a visit!
I'm happily married to Tina. We have a lovely little girl, Jacy (also a fully paid-up member of the SPA!) who occasionally enjoys the cosmos through my telescope.
