ASTRONOMY

🪐 Welcome to the astronomy pages 🌛

In writing these pages, I wish to share some of the knowledge and experiences I have gained during my years of observing.

For the various topics (sub-pages), please move the cursor to the ASTRONOMY selection at the very top of the page and a menu will drop down.

Astronomy! 😁 It is one of my major passions in life. 

My tools of the trade are as follows:

My observatory telescopes - a Skywatcher 14 inch (355mm) f4.65 Dobsonian reflector and a home built, three channel radio telescope (details here ).

 A little Skywatcher 4 inch (102mm) f5 refractor, for when I'm out and about.

And, last but not least, my Adler Optic 9x63 binoculars! 

The forest land around me offers stunningly dark skies!

My garden is also quite dark on a moonless night, being shielded from the sky-friendly LED streetlights. Naked-eye detail is visible within the Milky Way structure. Plus quite a few deep sky objects.

The area where I live is the Galloway Forest Park, which, in 2009, became the first official Dark Sky Park in Europe, achieving a `gold' rating for its skies - see the picture below, from the Daily Telegraph. I was involved, in an amateur capacity, in the bid for accreditation, which was based upon Bortle visibility assessments and night time darkness measurement.