My name is Rob.  I invite you to share with me my fascination in the countless objects appearing in our night skies.

My Astronomy website was originally hosted by Yahoo’s Geocities but they decided to close their free website hosting service and I was forced to look for a new website host. For a time my site was with 360.yahoo.com but now I am up and running again on my brother's hosting server, Crazy Domains in Australia.

For several years my telescope sat undisturbed under my computer desk while we moved house from Woy Woy to Watanobbi, just north of Wyong, NSW. I have now rekindled my interest and plan to not only expand on my website, but will get out there and resume my stargazing enthusiasm.

Now that we have our own home I can look at setting up my mini-observatory in the back yard.

One of my biggest hurdles has been getting a reliable power supply for my scope. The 12V jump starter battery died and I didn’t have a mains powered supply to use in its place. The other problem I had at Woy Woy was the amount of street lighting and obscured horizons which made observing difficult. The location here at Watanobbi is far better and I have a ready means of getting power to my scope.

Follow the links at the bottom of each page to navigate to the rest of my website where you will find some helpful information on the wonderful world of Astronomy, as well as some links to a number of other helpful Astronomy-related web sites which will provide some aids to assist you in enjoying this pastime.

As you get the opportunity to look through a telescope—perhaps for the first time—remember that those very earliest astronomers had access to only the most basic viewing instrument of all—their eyes.

Even Galileo only had a relatively small and crude telescope when compared to today’s modern instruments—yet even it enabled him to see celestial wonders such as the lunar craters, Saturn’s rings (though he couldn’t even recognize them as rings) and mighty Jupiter with its Big Red Spot and four largest moons.

Enjoy the experience and be realistic about what you expect to see through your instrument. The glossy colour photos are only accessible through highly modified photographs—the view through the eyepiece of your telescope is in black and white because that’s all your eyes can resolve in the dark of the night.

We found this video that expands on this idea very well.