On this page I'm going to tell you about why I find astronomy exciting.

I became interested in astronomy a long time before I started to do it
at university. I found the idea of stars and planets and galaxies
fascinating, and always knew I would end up doing astronomy at uni.
Several years ago I bought myself a really cheap telescope for £100.
I soon realised that it was pretty useless and sent it back and saved
up for a much better one. In the end I spent £375 on my scope, plus
over £100 more on extra lenses for it. The first time I used it I
looked at Jupiter, and I remember how thrilled I was to see 4 tiny
moons around it straight away. Since then I've seen so many wonderful
things through my telescope, including the rings of saturn, tiny craters
and valleys on the moon, and lots of beautiful galaxies and star clusters.
You can see other cool things with a telescope too, sometimes its fun
to use it during the day, and you can look at far away houses and trees
and see the tiniest details, and it's great for looking at birds, it
seems like you're right next to them but they can't see you!

Here is a picture of a galaxy which I've seen called the Sombrero Hat
and it's one of the nicest in the sky:

So, what exciting things are happening in astronomy at the moment?
The most exciting thing I think is the discovery of planets around other
stars. So far the technology isn't good enough to find planets as small
as the earth, only planets similar in size to Jupiter have been found.
One day we may even be able to look at the surfaces of these planets.
I love to see the artist impressions of what these planets might look
like, and who knows what wonderful places they might turn out to be?

Another exciting thing is the Galileo probe which is visiting Jupiter and
it's moons. It has seen some amazing things such as huge volcanic
eruptions on the moon IO which have covered thousands of kilometres
with lava. It is now looking very closely at the moon Europa, because
it is possible that life might exist there. Europa has a surface of
cracked ice, and it's pretty certain that underneath the ice there is
an ocean of water. Anywhere where there is liquid water life is atleast
a possibilty. One day there will be a mission to Europa to send a craft
down through the ice into the ocean. It's scary when you think about it,
the ice is several miles thick and the ocean beneath is probably several
times deeper than the deepest oceans on earth. Picture yourself in a
tiny submarine, 100km down in the pitch black ocean of Europa.......

Here are some pictures of Jupiter showing how it would have looked when
Comet SL9 hit it a few years ago. Unfortunately for me I was on holiday
in Greece when it happened so I missed seeing it with my telescope. I
was extremely disappointed about this because it could easily be seen
even in small scopes like mine:

You don't need a telescope to see lots of great things in the night sky.
On any dark clear night the sky is full of stars which have lots of
different colours if you look carefully. You may be able to see the milky
way, although it is quite faint. If you look in the right place you can
also see a galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy, and also Orions nebula is very
easy to see under Orions belt.
If you have some time and it's not too cold it can be well worth lying out
under the stars for a while because you will see on average 10 shooting
stars every hour. And on certain nights of the year there are meteor
showers. The best one is the Geminids, at their best on December 13th,
(If you can brave the cold!). I've only seen them once but I saw about
50 shooting stars per hour, it was a brilliant night!
A much rarer thing to see in the sky is a comet. But I've been very lucky
over the last couple of years. First there was Comet Hyakutake in 1996,
and I still remember the tail stretching almost half way across the sky.
Then in 1997, probably the best thing I've seen in the sky, Comet Hale-Bopp.
It was awe-inspiring, this huge fan of light standing above the trees each
night. I'll never forget how beautiful it was. I also looked at it through
my scope and could see the centre of the comet which had rings of dust
around it and jets of dust and gas coming out.

Here is a beautiful view of Hale-Bopp at sunset:

Here are my best efforts at some astro-photography. Thankfully you don't know
the number of failures it took to get 2 as good as these!

First up, here is the Moon and Venus together at twilight:

And this is the partial eclipse of the sun we had a few years ago:

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