1978-81 Early Days
My initial interest in astronomy was probably established through a general interest in science during primary school, living under dark country skies and being given a very cheap 40mm terrestrial telescope around the time of the much hyped "Comet of the Century" Comet Kohoutek in 1973. A slightly older school friend, Michael Sanders, had a 60mm Unitron Refractor on an Altazimuth mount that furthered my interest during 1976. I began looking at brochures, including ones from Celestron, supplied by Astro Optical Supplies (Crowsnest, Sydney, NSW) and wondered how I'd ever acquire a decent astronomical telescope.
At the end of 1976 my parents sold out from their dairy farm outside Boyanup and relocated to Bullcreek, a southern suburb in Perth. The sky was nowhere near as dark as the country (until after 1:15AM when most suburban street lights were turned off), but I soon discovered a positive which was that there was an astronomical group named the Astronomical Society of Western Australia (ASWA). I attended a public night at their Kalamunda observatory site and joined in early 1977.
Early in 1977 I bought my first true astronomical telescope, a cheap (~$400) 4.5" f/10 Newtonian reflector on a manual equatorial mount from K-Mart. This had two basic 0.96" Kellner eyepieces (18mm and 4mm), 2X Barlow lens, sun and moon filters, sun projection screen and a flimsy Equatorial mount. However it satisfied my initial curiosity with visual observation of the solar system objects and some of the brighter deep sky objects and I gained an understanding of how to use an equatorial mount and locate objects in the night sky. Unfortunately I don't seem to have any photographs of this telescope, so none appears in this gallery.
I picked up an interest in photography from Michael Sanders, who was now at UWA, and my brother Don who was studying photography as an elective subject at high school. Don bought a cheap (~$120) Russian made 35mm SLR camera, a Zenit E with a Pentx K M42x1 mounted 58mm f/2.0 lens during 1978, also from K-Mart. Don later upgraded to an Olympus OM10 with 50mm f/1.4 lens. I used both of these in inital astrophotography attempts.
Astronomical Society of WA (ASWA) Observatory - 25/11/1979
Astronomical Society of WA (ASWA) Observatory 25/11/1979, Elizabeth St, Kalamunda.
Kodak Ektachrome 400 Tranparency, Olympus OM10 35mm SLR, 50mm f/1.4 Lens 1/500sec at f/2.8. Scanned using Canon MP980 MFP 19/04/2009.
I joined ASWA in the early part of 1977 after going to a public observing night at this location. Meetings were held monthly in the Physics building at UWA at that time where presentations by members and external speakers were arranged.
Observing nights were also held at the Kalamunda observatory and after a period of training and proving one's competence, solo use of the telescope was permitted. (The "dome" pictured was not in use).
The telescope was a 12.5" Calver circa 1910 on loan from the Perth Observatory and was on a cast iron and brass equatorial mount with electric sidereal motor drive. This was considerably larger and more capable than my own limited manually operated gear and so became the basis for my first attempts at longer duration astrophotography.
As it turned out however, the age of the mount and drive meant that periodic error in the tracking required constant adjustment via a guide scope which was quite difficult to achieve and I never produced any satisfactory results with it.
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