Derek Robson is a chemist and amateur astronomer with an interest in astrophotography. His first main telescope obtained in 1982 - an f5.6 8.75” Fullerscope Newtonian reflector. He used film and followed advice from Ron Arbour. He has a Watec 902H2S meteor video camera built and tested by William Stewart, and part of the NEMETODE group http://www.nemetode.org/. The camera feeds images automatically to UKMON's Network https://ukmeteornetwork.co.uk/live/#/ and fireball data shared with NEMETODE and UKMON for triangulation, orbit calculation, ground trail prediction and dark flight modelling. Radio meteor activity is monitored continuously using a Fun Cube Dongle, home-made yagi antenna and the GRAVES radar transmitter in France.
His main interests in astrophotography include comets, meteors; meteor and stellar spectroscopy; asteroids and occultation of stars by asteroids.
In 2017, Derek was presented with a prize and certificate at the Royal Greenwich Observatory for a place in the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 competition. He imaged the one mile wide potentially hazardous asteroid - Near Earth Object (164121) 2003 YT1 which came within 3 million miles of the Earth on 31st October 2016. The image is displayed in the Royal Greenwich Observatory and National Maritime Museum, London. One of Derek's images of an occultation of a star by an asteroid by the drift method is short-listed in the 2019 competition and published in the 2019 yearbook.
Local society membership: A long-standing member of the British Astronomical Association, a member of the East Midlands Stargazers, Sunderland Astronomical Society, Northolt Branch Observatory, NEMETODE, UKMON and the International Meteor Organisation.
