Back in the land of the living

It's been a while, and there's been a bit of water under the bridge since I last came this way. I've left behind the work of casual employment, and started a job for which I am eminently suited - which makes a change!

In April we relocated to Brisbane, so that I could take up a post at the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium. There, I am styled a Support Officer, which means I am one of the show presenters. School shows, public shows, observatory sessions - they're all in the mix, as I show the good citizens and tourists of Brisbane the sights of the night sky and the Universe at large.

There is a certain repetitiveness about it, giving the same shows on a weekly basis, but with the changing sky as the year progresses, and the different audiences from 5-year-olds to adults, there is a certain amount of freedom to ad lib in each show and change the focus along the way. Besides, there is an awful lot of Universe to talk about in a 15- or 45-minute talk.

One of the fringe benefits for me as a long-time amateur astronomer, is having access to 2 good telescopes - a Zeiss 6-inch refractor and a Meade 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain. The pleasure is somewhat reduced due to the location just a few kilometres from the centre of a large city, but it's good to be back at the sharp end of a decent instrument. While in Edinburgh I had access to the Cooke 6-inch refractor at Calton Hill observatory, although I made far less use of it than I ought to have done, and really became an armchair astronomer over the last 20 years or so.

The Zeiss is particularly interesting, as I can easily mount a camera on it for photography through the telescope. So far I have just done a few tests that need to be built on, but I reckon I shall have fun with it in the future. As well as 'proper' photography with a camera attached securely to the business end (being on a Coudé mount, the scope can support quite a heavy load, which is just as well, since I intend to use my old brass Canons), I have experimented with cameras held against the eyepiece; not the best method, but it can work reasonably well, as this shot of Saturn taken with the mobile phone shows.

Another experiment was shooting both the Sun and Moon with a digital compact - still shooting precariously through the eyepiece while hand-holding the camera, but it worked quite nicely. 2 small sunspot groups are visible at top right and bottom right, and despite fairly poor seeing, the Moon image shows reasonable crater detail.