Today (09 January 2015) marks the beginning of my 48th year as an observational astronomer and I would like to take the opportunity to list some of the highlights of my observational career. This includes 2 transits of Venus, 4 transits of Mercury, 15 comets, over 200 lunar occultation timings, 150+ variable star estimates, hundreds of solar observations, one annular and a couple of partial solar eclipses, numerous lunar eclipses, lunar and planetary observations etc. I have also collected several meteorites from the Sri Lankan Jungles. I estimate that I have probably exceeded 6,000 observations to date. During this time I also taught myself optics and removed fungus from, recollimated and repaired at least 200 binoculars and a few dozen telescopes owned by members of some of the societies that I belong to. This service was provided free-of-charge. Visit my website www.rexdesilva.org for more details.
It may interest some readers to note that most of my observations were carried out using normal binoculars and a small 1.6 in (04 cm) telescope.
The highlight of my observing career is my photograph of a Triple conjunction of Sun, Moon and planet Venus. To the best of my knowledge this is the only photograph of such a conjunction in existence.
The illustrations shows my image of the triple conjunction and the first two pages of my observation logbook from 09 January 1968 .