I have been fascinated with Astronomy for many years now, especially having lived at Parkes, in the Central West of NSW, home to the Radio Telescope made famous during the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, and affectionately known by locals as “The Dish”. You may have even watched the movie of the same name.

I’ll let you in on a little secret...

It was actually filmed in nearby Forbes because very few original buildings of the 1969 era were still around in Parkes when they shot the film! There is one shop though, in the film, which was still in Parkes - I wonder if you can guess which one?

Since moving back to the Central Coast in 2002 my son Stephen and I visited the local Koolang Observatory at Bucketty, NSW, an hour’s drive from our current home at Watanobbi. It was the home of Australia’s largest-aperture public access telescope, a 500mm (20”) Dobsonian Newtonian Reflector, but the Koolang Observatory and Space Science Centre is sadly no longer operating. Click HERE to be taken to a webpage about what happened to it.

You can see a picture of it here with Stephen.

For a long time I didn’t have my own telescope and so some of the musings on these pages applied to myself as much as to those of you still trying to decide which ‘scope to get.

After a number of years pouring over various books and websites, comparing the various types and sizes of telescopes, I finally decided that a Celestron Nexstar 130SLT Go-to Newtonian Reflector was one of the best all-round instruments available - and what I have since read about this particular instrument in a number of reviews has reinforced my choice as the right one for me.

Here I am looking through the eyepiece of my Celestron telescope. When using a Reflecting 'scope you look in through the side of the tube whereas the Refracting 'scope has its eyepiece in the end. The same applies to a Schmidt -Cassegrain ‘scope. For nearer objects, this simple to use solar system imager should do the trick.

The Celestron Nexstar 130SLT Go-to Newtonian Reflector has enough aperture for some serious deep sky and planetary observation without being so big and unwieldy that it would be left in the house unused. The whole box weighed only 8kg and the Optical Tube Assembly of the 130 SLT is actually shorter than the 114 SLT!  As I share elsewhere on these pages, I will have to satisfy my need for an aperture fix elsewhere.

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A book worth chasing up is “Skywatching”, edited by Robert Burnham and Dr John O”Byrne, and published 2004 by Fog City Press, San Francisco CA, USA. ISBN 187701989-5