About time I said a bit about myself.
Born 1957 and raised in Sydney, Australia. As a child my parents got me out of bed about 9 or 10pm to watch one of the most amazing Meteor showers ever witnessed by Humans! The 1966 Leonids.
It was supposed to be visible to North America in their early Morning, but it was so large and active that we could see it down here too at early night.
I was dumbfounded and in awe! It really was like a shower as we imagine a meteor shower should look.
I remember seeing about 2 or 3 meteors per second.
After about an hour my parents sent me back to bed. Well, I was only about 9 years old and it was getting late.
It was fantastic and I wanted to see it every night, but my next event, an Aurora Australis didn't happen until the following year and my parents called me out to see that too.
Again I was mesmerised! Beautiful slowly dancing green veils of light in the sky!
Boy'oh'Boy I liked these night sky events!!!
And then in 1969 we were all sent home from school mid morning to sit in front of our Televisions (our school didn't own a TV) and watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step onto the Moon!
I was hooked. Space was for me. I was well and truly hooked.
Every opportunity I had to look at the night sky I layed back and learned constellations and watched the Moon phases change.
Jump ahead to age 27 and even though I was still a devoted Amatuer Astronomer I still hadn't ever seen through a telescope. Hey, I hadn't even looked at the sky through Binoculars!
So I decided it's time I did, and I bought a 4 1/4" Mirror and cell, a spider with secondary mirror, and a Focuser (.98"). I assembled it in a piece of 6 inch PVC pipe using a book on telescope making from the library.
I finished assembly of the scope, made a mount from pipes (same book) and that night as soon as dark fell I aimed it at what looked like a bright star in the north. Best to start with something easy to find.
Holy-Moly!!!!! The first thing I ever saw through a Telescope wasn't a star at all! It was the planet Saturn! I nearly pee'd myself LOL!
I called my wife out to look, then I dragged my neighbours in, and anyone else walking past was shown, all with the exuberance of a child with a new toy.
And here I am 31 years later after that first night at a telescope still getting excited and STILL showing people the sky through my gear. But now I show it to people all around the world via the internet and nightskiesnetwork.com
As for my Astronomy adventures, many years after building my 4 1/4" Reflector I bought a 12" Dobsonian and that started me on my path to buying too many telescopes.
I did Visual Astronomy for the next bunch of years and then after obtaining a Long Exposure modified Philips ToUcam 840k Pro webcam I started looking at the Moon, the Planets, and even bright DSO's in real time and showing them on my laptop to visitors and members at Club nights.
That was my first venture into Video Astronomy back in 2005.
I did that for about a year then took better advantage of the long exposure modification of the ToUcam and started doing DSO Imaging with it.
Within weeks I was getting far superior results than any other ToUcam user in the world! Maybe because I wasn't afraid to push the exposures over 50 seconds (others weren't going over 30 seconds, I don't know why).
After a couple years of using the ToUcam I stepped up to a Meade DSI, which proved itself to be a backward step. That camera wasn't as good as the ToUcam so I gave it away.
DSLR's were becoming the big thing in Imaging about this time so I purchased a Canon 350d DSLR and was amazed at the quality of Images over the ToUcam! I jumped into Astrophotography in a big way from that point on. I bought an ED80 for Imaging and I still use it too. Then came a string of telescopes to find out which ones worked best. I still have them all.
After about a year I was becoming very bored with Imaging. I would set it all up, get the software working, turn it on, then go inside and eat dinner, have a shower, watch some TV and occasionally go outside to check everything was still running OK, and AutoGuiding was still working.
I soon realised that this wasn't Astronomy. It definitely wasn't enjoyable. Many hours of imaging, followed the next day by more hours of processing, and in the end I got a pretty picture to store on my computer. Woop-de-doo.
I desperately needed that Buzz back, the excitement.
Then I remembered how much fun it was using the ToUcam in Live Video mode and showing the views to others. So I started using the ToUcam again.
As well as playing around with the ToUcam I borrowed a friends Gstar-Ex colour Guide camera while I looked around for a good Video camera for myself. The Gstar was fun but was limited to 5 seconds.
Then I heard about the Samsungs people were trying out. The SDC-435 (now called the SCB-2000) was popular but there was a better model that only one person had tried. The SCC-A2333 (now called the SCB-4000). In 2009 I hunted one down here in Australia ($480), gave it a few simple mods and had a great time using it as my new Video Astronomy camera. And then in 2010 I signed up to nightskiesnetwork.com so I could share my views with the world.
In amongst all this time I founded the Snake Valley Astronomy Camps which I ran for 8 years and I also founded (and am current president of) the Snake Valley Astronomical Association which is still running strong and we are currently building our Club's Observatories.
Here we are now in 2016 and I have 11 Telescopes, 2 ToUcams, 2 Mallincams, 1 Samsung 4000, an SX-5c, 2 Revolution Imagers, and a Canon 350d DSLR, and STILL Live Broadcasting to the world with my equipment so they can see the wonders of the Southern Hemisphere night sky, and it's still exciting.
I also enjoy making tutorials on You Tube to help others learn this fascinating branch of Video Astronomy.
The future holds exciting things with the opening of the new advanced nightskiesnetwork.com, and the advancement in camera technology.
I look forward to going along on the ride, and most all, having fun doing it.
Cheers,
Ken James
Snake Valley
Australia