My interest in astronomy began in the 1960’s when as a child I received a Prinz model 330 telescope as a present. It was further fuelled by reading the Observers book of Astronomy by Patrick Moore and of course watching his BBC Sky at Night program. I marvelled at the black and white pictures of distant galaxies taken by large telescopes such as the 200” reflector at Mount Palomar.

It didn’t occur to me then that over half a century later technology would advance to the point I would be able to take high resolution colour images of these objects from my own garden. All this made possible by the advances in affordable optics, imaging chips, and computers and of course the wealth of knowledge shared by amateur astronomers on YouTube.