Whilst on a camping holiday in North Wales in the summer of 2002, I gazed up at a crystal clear, night sky and was amazed at the sheer quantity of stars visible. I decided it would be worth getting to know what some of these stars were and I also thought it would be nice to have a telescope to do this with.
Christmas (2002). Sharon, my partner, gave me a telescope as a surprise present, How chuffed was I. I spent several months observing the moon, Orion and other stars that are visible from my south facing, double-glazed kitchen window. Living in a first floor flat about a mile from Coventry city centre and not having access to a garden, this is the only decent view I have of the night sky from my home. Sharon's Mother lives in a small village on the outskirts of Coventry. The garden here is fairly good although there are a lot of tall trees, which can obscure low tracking objects. My parents live on Anglesey, north Wales, where I was brought up. There are plenty of dark places free from light polution that can be visited with a scope. I'm also looking forward to next summers camping holiday to North Wales, this years holiday was a complete washout and we didn't get a single clear night to look at the stars.
Summer (2004). This year I was lucky with the weather and picked the two best weeks for my Holiday. Very warm and dry with only a couple of damp days. I had some very good views of the Moon on the first couple of nights and some very chilled out nights just lying back in my deckchair enjoying the Milky way. Towards the end of the holiday, with the Moon rising later in the night, I had some very good views of the Andromeda Galaxy using a new scope!. Details to come soon on my Telescope page.
I was very inspired by something I saw on a BBC program in August (2003). The program was the 'All night star party' and what inspired me was the image of Mars that was taken using a modified webcam. As soon as the program had finished, I accessed the internet to find out more about using a webcam, as an alternative to using a standard camera and film, to image the stars. After visiting many sites, I decided that I would have to give Webcam Astrophotography a try. I bought a couple of Quickcam vc webcams off Ebay and proceeded to experiment with them and my scope. All the details can be found on the webcams page. I have also included some modifications to my scope and mount, these can be seen on the Telescope page.
All of the images in the gallery have been taken by me from my kitchen window, this is due to a very poor battery in my laptop and a lack of a cigar lighter socket in the car. I think I will have to remedy this soon, as I need to get to a darker site to do some more experiments with my webcam modifications.
Please explore my site and visit often, as I will be updating as soon as new ideas or images are finished.
Clear skies
Roger Booth
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