@christopher-john-hooker
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Registered: 10 years, 3 months ago
I have been interested in astronomy and space travel since childhood, but the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact on Jupiter in 1994 inspired me to buy a Meade LX-10 20cm SCT. I started out observing the Moon, planets and brighter deep-sky objects visually, but then became interested in webcam imaging, and since 2004 that has been my main astronomical activity. Inevitably, since those early times I have acquired several more telescopes, including the 10-inch Newtonian which is now my main instrument for imaging. I also developed an interest in imaging challenging subjects such as Mercury, libration-zone features on the Moon and the ISS, and I have also observed occultations by asteroids when the tracks passed over my location. I am now actively pursuing several specialised imaging projects including Mercury's sodium tail and the sodium clouds originating from Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, and imaging the nightside surface of Venus in the infra-red. I am Mercury coordinator for the Mercury and Venus section.
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