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About Me
The following ramblings are an attempt to explain what my hobby and
philosophy of life are about.
I find that some amateur astronomers' websites are just a little bit dull. OK, many have great
images, but there is never any glimpse of the person behind them. When I first entered amateur astronomy there were loads
of unique, eccentric and entertaining characters about, but with many astro websites you don't get any idea of what
the site owner is really like. Perhaps this is because people seem terrified of revealing what they really think these days, hiding
under a variety of pseudonyms, alter egos and avatars.
Many amateur astronomers (though not all!) are rather different to the run-of-the-mill people that
seem to exist in droves in this dumbed-down world we live in. I think it was the presence of such genuine characters in astronomy
that largely attracted me to the hobby in the first place....
People watched 'The Sky at Night', in Patrick Moore's era, partly because of astronomy, but mainly because Patrick Moore presented it: a real character, who
spoke his mind and was a true survivor, outlasting all his critics.
In 2013 I completed a comprehensive biography of Patrick.
Biography of Patrick on Amazon UK
and I then wrote a sequel!
Biography sequel of Patrick on Amazon UK
PROOF THAT PATRICK'S CAR WAS, AS HE CLAIMED, OVERTAKEN BY A DOG!
I'm as interested in astronomical characters as astronomy
itself and I particularly like real, dependable and unique characters who aren't just cloned sheep, namely photocopies of everyone else.
I've been a dedicated observer in the amateur astronomy world, boy and man, for well over 50
years now and, in the last 40 years or so, I've seen many 'fly-by-night' astronomers come and go. Media astronomers (male and female) have
come and gone, as have loads of telescope dealers. I've seen astronomers bankrupted, jailed, ordered to do
community service, become alcoholics, and worse!
I've seen astronomy publications rise and fall, and telescope manufacturers do the same. TV
astronomy producers and their assistants materialise and dematerialise, as do magazine editors: you count them in and you count them out.
Throughout all this I've simply continued observing the Night Sky and often writing about it.
Apart from observing, photographing and imaging the night sky I did a fair amount of voluntary work in
the BAA throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Specifically, I was the BAA Lunar Section photographic co-ordinator from
1983 to 1991 and then from 1990 to 1997 I was the BAA Papers secretary and the monthly meetings recorder.
I was also the assistant Editor of Guy Hurst's 'The Astronomer' magazine for most of the 1990s.
From 1990 to 1999, and again from 2002 to 2006 I used to present monthly 'Sky Notes' at all of the BAA's
monthly meetings. I tried to make these as humorous and politically incorrect as possible....which seemed
to appeal to the members! Of course, I could not do it these days.... The ultra-PC world means humour is illegal and if I cracked a non-PC joke
the wokes would attack and I'd be arrested!
From 1997 to 1999 I served as the BAA's 55th President which was an honour, but
perhaps not really me at all, as I hate waffle, hot air and chairing meetings.....YAWN!!
Indeed, I've always loathed so-called 'social situations' and am proud to say that I have never attended a 'party' or even a wedding in my entire life, despite
numerous invitations. Such situations would have made me feel deeply uncomfortable and I couldn't wait to get home.
The strange thing is, even those people who do attend parties, weddings and similar events tell me they hate them too, but they don't have the nerve to say NO!
As well as my BAA work my greatest astronomical contribution has probably been answering thousands of emails about telescope and equipment problems and helping people
out in this respect, at least prior to 2010 or so. Fortunately, since the advent of youtube, lots of other amateurs have taken up this role, and a video speaks a million words....so I can have a rest....
When I was 15, in
1973, I built a 22cm reflector, including grinding and polishing the optics and testing them. Everything was put together
using a hack saw, a drill, screws and bolts. I even poured the boiling pitch to make the tool to polish the mirror.
Me, in the mid '70s with the 22cm Newt.
I gave that telescope away
to Braintree & Halstead A.S. in the 1980s. It still worked well into the 21st century apparently! Ever since 1973 I've been interested in
testing telescopes and their optics. In my engineering degree at Brunel my final year core subject was control theory:
the theory and design behind feedback loops and critically damped systems, slewing, overshoot, undershoot etc....I chose this
topic so that I could better understand telescope control systems.
So I do know a bit about optics and mechanics (unlike some telescope manufacturers and many dealers!!) This combination of
optical, electronic and mechanical knowledge gave me the confidence to publish my first book (Astronomical Equipment for Amateurs) in 1998.
This book singlehandedly sparked a landslide in telescope equipment books. I've now written thirteen books: eight on practical astronomy, two about
Patrick Moore and three small children's 'Space' books, along with hundreds of articles about amateur astronomy.
I must say that the few critics of my books (and hundreds of articles) never seem to have the energy to write
books or articles themselves. There's a reason for this; criticism is easy, writing books and quality articles is hard.
Whenever I write a book or a magazine article I write it within the deadline: otherwise I couldn't live with myself. If I say something,
I mean it. A bit obsessive perhaps? Yes, but I'd rather be reliable and obsessive than spout bull and hype, which seems to
be a 21st century disease.
I started off as a visual observer, with
my small childhood refractors (30mm and 60mm) and with 3-inch and 4-inch refractors I had access to via the former Bury Grammar school's Physics teacher, Don Woodhouse. Then I built and used that home made 22cm Newtonian. But when I acquired serious equipment, in 1980 (a 14-inch Cassegrain/Newtonian) I became a lunar, planetary
and cometary photographer, doing all my developing and fixing and printing too. Two bathrooms in my previous homes became photographic
studios too, where much enlarging and printing took place. From 1992 I started to use the early CCDs, buying one of the first Starlight
Express cameras in those days...the 3rd one made by Terry Platt if I recall. By the mid 1990s I was a total CCD convert and am a 100% digital imager now. In recent
years, since 2017 or so, I was a 'carer' for my elderly father which has stopped me observing at night. Instead I switched to remote imaging
via itelescope.net. My father died, aged 99, in 2025. I am convinced my looking after him allowed him to live to such a great age.
With all this hard-earned knowledge I've never been afraid to help other amateurs or to state my case.
I've done it my way, but I was certainly inspired by the late Sir Patrick Moore, the longest duration TV presenter of the same series in
history, and he was no stranger to controversy. Political correctness had no place in his world. I agreed
with many, but certainly not all of his views. He was a survivor in the astro world. I like to think, in my small way, I have
survived too. TV astronomers come and go, but he was different because he said what he thought and was a true
observer, not just a vacuous grinning media 'personality'. Others fake enthusiasm but his was genuine. The real McCoy.
Patrick has a healthy rant about falling TV standards.
I have had a long term dedication to astronomy and helping other amateurs. As mentioned earlier, I've also sorted out many people's telescope
and observatory problems and, on numerous occasions, given old gear away rather than sell it. From the 1990s to 2010 or so I wrote *detailed*
answers to amateurs with equipment problems. Sometimes I received several queries a week. Every plea for help was answered and I started this in the days before most people had e-mail.
I'm very privileged to have known some really outstanding amateur astronomers, some of whom I've
known for more than a quarter of a century. Here are some pictures of a few of them.
Firstly, 5 consecutive BAA Presidents at the BAA Winchester Weekend in (from memory) 2005. From right to
left: Maurice Gavin, Me, Nick Hewitt, Guy Hurst, Tom Boles.
Five BAA Presidents.
Next, a scary group of planetary imagers at Astrofest in the early 2000s. From right to left: Me, Jamie Cooper,
Dave Tyler and Damian Peach.
Four at Astrofest.
I've also been privileged to know some of the greats who are, sadly, no longer around, like George Alcock,
Horace Dall, Harold Ridley, Alan Young and Paul Doherty.
Science and Aliens
I am fascinated by the big cosmological and evolutionary questions, as it is only by science that we can
possibly understand what the
Universe and the human brain is about. The Universe is a fascinating mystery, with
far stranger aspects to it than anything religion can offer....Quantum Uncertainty,
String Theory, Black Holes, they all fascinate me. The microscopic world fascinates me too.
The Large Hadron Collider revealed the Higgs Boson in 2012....remarkable! This is an exciting time
to be alive. Then there is Dark Matter and Dark Energy. All fascinating challenges waiting
to be solved. When we understand these mysteries, and the exact nature of gravity, interstellar travel may become possible
and man can spread out into the Universe.
As regards Alien life, well, as
Arthur C. Clarke once said "If we are alone...that is terrifying and if we
are not alone, that is terrifying too". It is rather odd that, in a Universe that is 14 billion years old, we see NOT A SHRED of
extra-terrestrial intelligence anywhere. Where are the Aliens? Surely this is the biggest question of all, the so-called
"Fermi Paradox". Our galaxy contains maybe 200 billion stars and has been around for maybe 10 billion years.
At light-speed it only takes 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. Surely there should
be civilisations FAR more advanced than us who have, by now, populated the entire galaxy? So where are they?
Maybe there is an all-powerful 'BORG' type race in our Galaxy, that annihilates any
other life form that starts to travel through space? That might explain what we see, although I would definitely
class that as Science Fiction. I think we should be a little bit careful about blasting
our messages into the ether saying "Is anyone there?". Stephen Hawking held this view too.
I can recommend reading Peter F. Hamilton's 'Pandora's Star' if you want to imagine what
might be out there. Sentience and peacefulness just do NOT seem to go hand in hand. It's the survival of the fittest and most
ruthless, here on Earth AND, I would suggest, 'out there' too. Alastair Reynolds' 'Revelation Space' Universe books offer
intriguing and worrying S.F. answers to this 'lack of aliens'
mystery as well. The book "Where is Everybody" by Stephen Webb gives an excellent account of
where everyone may, or rather, may not be, in our Universe; and, don't tell me that UFO's have landed and Roswell was real! As the great
discoverer George Alcock (see my dedicated web page) once told me: "Strange, all these people seeing Flying
Saucers and yet I spend 400 hours a year sweeping the skies, discovering comets and novae
and have never seen any....obviously I'm doing something wrong....." Yep, you were doing something wrong, you were living
in the real world George. The PanSTARRS telescopes spot anything bigger than a dustbin in low earth orbit these days....but
they don't spot UFOs.....
Science Fiction has been a constant theme in my life from childhood
to the present day, but unlike some I can separate science from fiction. Hard S.F. points the way in which exciting developments in science
and space travel *may* happen. For example, one day soon neural nets or artificial intelligence may become sentient.
The brain has 100 trillion synapses and over ten billion neurons optimised for parallel processing. At some time in
this century that structure will be replicated in electronic hardware and robots may well become indistinguishable from humans. What are the bible
thumpers going to do with their faith if that happens?
Inspired by Patrick and NASA
As far back as I can recall I have been interested in Space Rockets
and the Night Sky; from the first TV episodes of Dr Who and Fireball XL5.
Dr Who 1963
Fireball XL5
But it was only when I came across a copy of Patrick
Moore's 1968 'Observer's Book of Astronomy', when I was ten, and saw
pictures of 'Big' telescopes in amateur astronomers' back gardens that I
realised there was such a thing as an 'amateur astronomer'.Without doubt that
tiny little book, that fitted neatly in a coat pocket, changed my life.
A year later,
the Apollo 11 Moon landing really fired my enthusiasm and I joined the BAA (British Astronomical Association). Then, when Patrick
showed off his 15 inch reflector on a Sky at Night program in 1973, it
inspired me to build my own 8.5 inch fork mounted telescope, including grinding and
polishing the mirror.
I still reckon there is NOTHING like watching one of
those 3,000 ton Saturn V Moon Rockets taking off live on TV......they were
just BLOODY AWESOME. Videos like the one below send shivers up my spine and
bring a lump to my throat. I was 11 when Apollo 11 went to the Moon. That, and
Patrick's books, fired me up with enthusiasm. The astronauts were heroes, but the biggest heroes were NOT the astronauts.
No, the biggest heroes were the unsung engineers and scientists who made the Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft work reliably. The
astronauts were privileged to use that technology. In recent years a few astronauts
have started charging significant sums of money to sign autographs and
pose with people! It's a bit sad to see this. At least Neil Armstrong didn't sink to that level! I'd risk my life tomorrow to go to Mars if
NASA were interested in an ageing nerd......Here's a Saturn V launch clip on YouTube....
YouTube Saturn V launch compilation
Here's the awesome Apollo 11 Moon landing.
YouTube Apollo 11 Moon landing
And I won't waste my breath on those sad case conspiracy theorists who claim it was all faked.
They are mentally ill, in love with their
own voices and envious of the scientists and engineers who made it possible. Intellectually the
conspiracy theorists are just amoebae by comparison. The Apollo astronauts aligned laser
reflectors on the Moon that any observatory with a powerful laser can bounce a beam off,
and they have done, since 1969. Get out of that!!
It looks like, in 2026, we may FINALLY be returning to the Moon....after more than 50 years....AT LAST!!
If we could do it in the 60s, surely we can go back? Although maybe there is no-one who can motivate like JFK anymore?
JFK's famous speech
Like Patrick, I
joined the British Astronomical Association (BAA) aged 11 (1969) so have been a
member for over 50 years now. Various legendary BAA observers inspired me to become an
astrophotographer. These included Horace Dall, Harold Ridley, Alan Young
and Cdr Henry Hatfield. Since joining the BAA I have written many articles: 100 monthly features in the
Lunar Section Circular (1983 - 1991), countless articles in the Journal, recorded the meetings for 7 years (1990 - 1997),
been the Papers Secretary for 7 years (1990 - 1997) and given over 100 talks to the BAA alone
since 1981. All for free!! (Sorry if I'm repeating myself here...) My monthly Sky Notes were very popular at meetings from 1990 - 1999 and 2002
to 2006. I prepared over 100 slides for many of the final talks, before my mother became
terminally ill and needed my full attention, and that of my Dad. I was BAA President from 1997 to 1999 and asteroid 7239 was named
'Mobberley' by the IAU in 1997, after its discoverer, Brian Manning, suggested his first asteroid should be named after me,
for my contribution to amateur astronomy. Thank's Brian!
Being President at 39 made me one of the youngest ever BAA Presidents but these days astro-
politics bores me rigid. The Night Sky and cosmology are my real interests, as well as looking after
my elderly father. In 2000 the BAA Council presented me with their Walter Goodacre Award which takes pride of
place above my writing desk and frequently spurs me on.
The last 40 years have been dismal ones for manned spaceflight. In 1972, I was
14; I thought we were poised on the verge of an era of manned space exploration, throughout the
solar system. What has happened since then? In terms of manned spaceflight...nothing.
Like Eugene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, I don't consider orbital flights any
advance at all. Shuttle astronauts are not fully fledged astronauts. They are travelling a few hundred
miles vertically!! I do NOT consider that spaceflight. Spaceflight is when you go to
the Moon, the planets, and other solar systems.....Sorry, I'm hard to impress!
The Apollo moon landings were fantastic - since then, nothing....at least not with respect to
manned space travel. PATHETIC!!!!! Still, seeing a Saturn V or Shuttle launch always impressed me
and brought a lump to my throat. If only the money poured into wars by world leaders
was pumped into NASA, and, say, Cancer research, we would have
manned Mars bases by now, and Cancer would be history. Here is
a link to a Shuttle launch synchronised to Countdown by Rush.
Countdown by Rush.
Thought I'd throw a second Rush track in at this point too.....
Subdivisions by Rush.
and a third...
Analog Kid by Rush.
Engineers & Bullshitters
Professionally, I was an electronics engineer for
22 years, from 1980 to 2002 (I graduated from Brunel University in 1980). I was also sponsored as a student, during my sandwich-course
Uni years (1976 - 1980) by Thorn Electrical Industries and I worked for them between Uni terms in 1977, 78 and 79.
However, electronics was merely a career, not an interest, and I honestly
cannot recall many engineering projects that I was involved with, in
those 22 years, that were ground-breaking. My main role in those 22 years
was as a Marconi software engineer. In the final years I wrote embedded C and assembler code used
in microprocessors onboard microwave tags. These microprocessors were mainly Pic 12 and 17
series units, although some were Motorola devices, e.g. the little workhorse, the HC11.
The projects I worked on were many and varied, ranging from component Failure Analysis, to optical
data bus projects, European collaborative ventures, RF tags for cars and road tolling, the
deeply overspent JORN radar project, testing cables for the Navy, remote meter reading
systems, thick film hybrid circuit testing and many other underfunded and impossible timescale
nightmares!
Electronics is a
strange profession, full of management who get paid FAR MORE than the working
engineers simply for thinking up buzzwords and lying about timescales and
budgets. Years ago we had a Senior Lab Consultant who made Walter Mitty look like a well
-balanced guy; he was completely off his rocker....but he got paid
twice what the engineers were on. PLEASE, read the text file on his fairy stories!!
Text File
on the absolute nutter who was our top laboratory consultant...!!
I hope you enjoyed that file. Honestly, the stories are all true. He was a barking mad nutter!!
How do these people get promoted to
these positions? Well, it's because the people above them are just as bad!
One senior manager, about to retire, once told me: "We've always liked to promote these self-obsessed people to get
them out of the way, so they don't interfere with the real work"... Words
fail me!! Electronics engineers are some of the cleverest people in society and yet they are paid half what some of their
line management are paid (for bullshitting), little more than schoolteachers, far less than M.P.'s and about a third of what Doctors get paid.....
Then we are told there is a skills shortage!!! Hardly surprising
when a plumber or plasterer can earn more in a day than an
electronics engineer gets in a week. As for M.P.'s, well, I used to love watching Jeremy Paxman give them a good interrogation!
The famous Paxman/Howard interview!
One of my ex-bosses, whenever presented with a question he didn't want to hear, simply had a massive throat clearing spasm that could
last for hours so he didn't have to answer. Another boss was so unpopular that when he left the company people took money OUT of his
collection....In the 1980s Marconi
was riddled with engineer suicides on a monthly basis. Some parts of the company had a bigger body throughput than the local morgue.
People topped
themselves because they were coping with a mental stress level
1000x higher than the Prime Minister, but were paid little more
than a lavatory cleaner, in a company where pay scales were frozen
at zero percent for several years. On top of this, their bosses were paid double or triple what they were on for talking bull. A small fraction of the suicides are covered on a Wikipedia page, although, again, with a cold war/espionage/hitman type spin. Of the 3 suicides and one
premature death cases I knew, all were related simply to job
stress and pay, not contract killers!
Wiki page on some electronic industry suicides
If you wanted to buy a spare soldering iron tip, in the 1980s industry I worked in, you
needed several management signatories: it was bureaucracy gone mad. Some days I spent an entire day walking around the site just to
get half a dozen signatories for purchasing something like an oscilloscope probe.
In the early 90s I helped build a pioneering system called 'React' which automatically identified a
blind person nearby and activated various voice messages to help them home in on a help-point/advice centre. Technically it worked
perfectly, but because it was not the flavour of the month project, and because of general management sloth the project was allowed to
die. This was typical of my experience in the UK electronics industry. Working on projects which, for a small amount of extra
investment, would have been great successes...but there never was that investment. Of course, in the USA, Germany, Japan, or even China,
the money would have been found, because they don't have the same Old Boy management system in place. Hardly surprising that the UK only has a small car industry and
does not make things like Mobile phones, tablets or digital cameras. We have the brainpower, but the whole country is crippled under a mass of
overconfident, arrogant, invariably morbidly obese, badly fitting wig wearing, deadwood, in suits, spouting bullshit and lying about
budgets and timescales.
Another project I worked on briefly was the digital design for a next generation super-sensitive
Olfactory Sensor, that's a sensor that sniffs chemicals and explosives etc....If enough money was
pumped into the research for such a device it could be made as sensitive as a bloodhound, i.e. it
could sniff out drug smugglers and explosives easily. Now just think what a difference that would make
in the modern world. Sounds great eh? Suicide bombing ended, at a stroke. Guess what the budget for this was.....It was 20K!!! No, that's
not a typo.....I think I really do have a right to a rant, don't you? The Super Olfactory sensor was dead before it
drew the first breath.....Yet, given proper funding it could have stopped terrorism and drug smuggling
in its tracks. Suicide bombers cost the world billions, yet GEC-Marconi would not spend more than 20K on
a system to sniff out explosives!
My working life improved for me in the late 90s, just a bit, but in 2002 the company literally collapsed, due to
the massive egos of the most senior company directors, who, as always, walked away with huge multi-million pound pensions and bonuses to reward
their years of making the wrong decisions, using buzzwords and lying about timescales. Managers lie about timescales
and budgets to get the contracts and get the Brownie points, and a big pay rise. By the time the brown stuff hits the fan they are
always well gone and untraceable. They can never be held to account, but they should be jailed. This is why so many
big engineering projects go over budget and over cost. Because the original contract clinching managers lied to undercut the
competition, and the customers, employing similar people didn't suss this out! It happens time and time and time again.
Fortunately, in August 2002, I was offered a nice financial severance package and,
as I had paid my mortgage off many years earlier, I decided to move into
astronomical writing full-time. I escaped from the daily grind.
My last day
at work...August 2002. With office secretary Pam Betts.
The Bachelor Life
In 2002 I moved
back to live with my parents under dark Suffolk skies and rented my house
out to a work colleague. My life really started in August 2002. At last I
was doing what I wanted to after a 22 year mental slog in engineering: observing when it was clear, writing when
it was not. Bliss !! Plus I was living with my parents and not someone waiting to divorce me!
In 2006 my parents celebrated 56 years of
marriage: an old fashioned marriage where the man earns the money and the woman lovingly looks after him.
A rare recipe that worked well in the distant past, but is rarely seen now. Tragically, my mother succumbed to Bowel Cancer on
September 8th 2006. But at least I had four 'retired' years at home with her. For that luck, I will always be grateful. I have written a
full tribute to my Mum. There is a link on this page.
I have always been a single man, and thank goodness for that. From
what I have seen of many modern marriages they are a business pact between two
people who agree to stress each other up for life, often just because two salaries pay the bills. After the naive early years
are over most married couples seem to irritate each other and argue every day,
just putting on a different face for parties and functions. Yes, there are
exceptions to every rule, but look at the current divorce statistics....!
Then there are these people who say
they are "on perfectly amicable terms with their ex"! If you are on perfectly amicable terms
why did you ever split up? Then they seem to instantly rebound into another disastrous relationship as if to say to
their ex "See, I can easily find someone else......you were the problem"......Then that relationship breaks up
after another seven years or so..... Why not just do without and live a peaceful and tranquil life without arguments?
I may come across as a male chauvinist
but there is no way I would ever be so arrogant as to inflict my hobby on a non-astronomical partner. There is yet another
issue here too. When you marry someone you do not just marry them, you marry their whole interfering family who
start telling you how to live your damned life. A married female friend of mine told me recently
how lucky I was that I had no family baggage and no in-laws running my life. I couldn't argue with that! If I want a new
telescope I buy it. If I want to go on a total solar eclipse trip I book it. I don't need a permit from the mother-in-law!
All things considered I am proud of the fact that I am single and have avoided all
this sort of hassle. I feel somewhat smug that so many people seem to have regarded me as 'wrong' throughout my
life, simply because I was an independent thinker, hated social situations, and have NEVER had a 'relationship'. I am simply not a brainwashed pack animal.
I guess many would diagnose me as an 'Asperger' case, but I think putting people into a box is a modern obsession. I learned to live with being an 'outcast' early on in my
life. I had one good eye and one poor eye and so part of my childhood was lived with a patch over the good eye to encourage the bad eye. When you spend months at school with one
glasses lens taped over, you end up being the butt of 'Cyclops' jokes pretty quickly. But what doesn't kill you makes you a lot stronger.
Throughout my young life people told me I would not achieve anything, simply because I was a very quiet person and never spoke about things if I wasn't totally sure of the facts.
For example, I was told I was not O Level material (I got 9 in real subjects), I was not
A Level material (I got Maths, Physics and Electronics in the era when exams were hard to pass!), and I was also told I would never get a degree or
sponsorship for a degree. I got both, and left Brunel University 5,000 pounds in profit in 1980 with an honours degree in a REAL subject, namely
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, not the "History of Art" or something plain useless to society.
I could afford to retire from my salaried day job at 44. So, considering all the people who have, my whole life, told me
how I should live my life, I feel I got it right. One thing I have NEVER,
EVER, done is to tell friends of mine how they should live their lives. Yet, quite a few of my *former* friends seemed to be
compelled to tell ME how I should live mine, even when their own lives were a walking disaster area!!!! Extraordinary!!
All things considered I will continue leading my civilised and tranquil bachelor life according to the gospel of Sir
Patrick Moore. Patrick was nearly always right on most things and, like me, he had no time
for political correctness: a system whereby you are encouraged to say one thing and think another, so everyone is even more
confused than normal! Political correctness is just a symptom of a society where overpaid human rights lawyers
rule the world, in societies where criminals are treated better than their victims.
40 years ago it was fashionable to be a racist and to smoke. Now it's fashionable to be politically correct, binge drink,
and put an inquisitive inflection on the last word of every sentence, like an Australian, or to precede every sentence with the
word...."So".....
I'm not impressed by these fads, or persuaded to live my life like every other photocopied
person. I do things the way I want to do them and I'm also 100% reliable. One of my former
bosses called me "The Postman", as I always delivered the goods, even if he never did. Like Patrick, I
ignore fashionable trends and just carry on doing astronomy.
With Patrick
at a BAA Lunar Section meeting in 1984!
With Patrick
at the BAA Centenary meeting in 1990.
Mobberley background
Throughout all my astronomical endeavours I was encouraged
by both my parents, especially my late mother. My father was in the RAF aerobatics team in the
1950s and 60s and survived a mid-air collision (before I was born...GULP). See this article
from the Brentwood Gazette sixty years after the event:
Brentwood Gazette piece.
He also landed an RAF Victor without any electrics (due to a fuel leak)
in the early 1960s, saving the lives of himself and the crew. He was awarded
the Air Force Cross for that in 1965. He was an RAF 'Nuclear Deterrent' pilot flying Victors
during the cold war period in the 60s, on call if World War III started! Up to the age of 70 he was still
flying planes and only retired in 1998, aged 72. The
Mobberley family tree (and my DNA is definitely from my father's side...pictures of us at similar ages are almost identical!) has
a good number of
long duration survivors. Even in the 19th Century they were surviving well
into their 80s.
Small montage of my Dad, his parents and his father's
parents.
However, my Mobberley DNA does have a few quirks.
As mentioned earlier, I have two completely different eyes, one with excellent vision and
the other very poor (mainly astigmatism and long-sightedness). Thus I have very poor stereo vision.
This seems to have been passed down from my great-grandmother Hannah Mobberley (maiden name Massey). When I was
a child I had two eye operations to attempt to correct problems with my eyesight. The first operation was a typical
NHS bodge...they made things worse. The second operation was little better. If I had received
better medical treatment I might have full stereo vision now, but then, aged 3 and 5 you don't realise just
how bad the NHS can be. You assume medical people know what they are doing. HAH!!!!
Many are just blundering through their jobs like so many other people, they just
get paid far more. Conversely, surgeons who transform people's lives by removing tumors,
fitting new hips, transplanting hearts, they are brilliant people, but the typical GP....well, they are a very mixed bag!
Some of them can't even speak fluent English despite getting paid 100K a year. And as for
hospital administrators on 200K/year who can't even keep their hospitals MRSA free....can
someone explain their salaries to me please? How are they worth 10x the salary of a nurse???
In the last few years I have become a carer for my Dad, which has involved many interactions with the NHS. My findings are as follows:
A lot of the time you'd do better just using Google! NHS Hospital Consultants: A mixture of jokers and pen-pushers with loads of letters after their names.
NHS Ambulance staff: Brilliant people! NHS District Nurses: Brilliant people! So, as always, the really valuable people are those on the lowest salaries!
If you do need an operation, and have the money, go private, after doing exhaustive checks on the surgeon......
There's no waiting list and you are not just a number......in most cases....
Apart from my visual history, another Mobberley
family curse is mouth ulcers. My father and grandmother had them...anything
sharp that cuts the mouth results in a week of pain. I have had some success
in reducing the incidence of these and treating them myself....again, no thanks
to the medical world.
I have had a fair
amount of back pain too over the years but that has largely been cured.
Again, it has been cured by me.....Physiotherapists and chiropractors are just conmen.
They take your money and either make your back worse, or have no effect.....
I spent several years working out a regime to get my back in shape, and, since late 2000
I have been mainly pain-free, if I am careful.
However I vastly prefer visual observing with a Newtonian telescope
where I don't have to bend down...continuous bending on cold, damp
nights really does me no good at all! Apart from those niggles though, I was virtually
never unwell.......until I reached 60.
In March 2018 I was shocked to find that despite being fit, active, and never overweight, I had become a diabetic.
This was a major shock but I reduced my blood sugar to safe levels via diet, exercise and Metformin tablets.
At the time of writing it's unclear how I became diabetic as I've always been slim and there's no diabetes in the family.
I could be someone with internal fat deposits... a TOFI (thin outside, fat inside).
My Diabetes progress
My father spent a few years compiling a family tree which is
summarised in the diagram link below.
A compact summary of my family tree.
A newspaper article on my Grandfather Jim Mobberley (1888 - 1970) when he retired from a life in the Coal Mines in 1954 is
shown here.
Rugeley Times Dec 4th 1954.
Astro Holidays
I have been on quite a few astronomy holidays and trips.
I suppose my first real astro-trip was to see Halley's Comet from Tenerife in
March 1986. A few years later I visited the French lunar photographer Georges
Viscardy at his observatory in the hills above Nice. In 1991 I started serious
eclipse-chasing with a holiday in Hawaii for the big 'July 1991' eclipse.
Tragically we were clouded out, which was really disappointing when we had all
travelled so far. I have learnt quite a few things about enjoying astro-holidays
to the full since then. When you are a single traveller, like me, you will only really
enjoy a holiday if you are in the company of like-minded friends who are tolerant
of your needs and preferences. There are few things worse than finding out that
you are in a hotel where you don't know anyone else and everyone on your itinerary
is a complete nerd, or an alcoholic. The only sensible plan is to
make sure you travel on the same itinerary (and are in the same hotels...the two
things are NOT always the same thing!!) as people who you want to be with and who want
to be with you. The company of such astro-friends will make or break the holiday, as
will the company of people who you can't stand. Being stuck in a hotel on your own,
far from home, with no like-minded friends around, can be an utterly depressing
situation and a total waste of money. So, before you embark on
an astronomy holiday, check out who of your friends are on the same itinerary AND hotels
AND plane flights. I repeat: You may think the same itinerary means the same hotels and plane
flights........IT DOES NOT !!! It just means you see the same sights at the same
time. When an eclipse is taking place, there will be hundreds of travellers and
they will not all fit in one hotel and one plane. You may be totally separated
from your friends but not realise this until you get to the airport. Many astro-
holidays seek to give the best value-for-money by whistle-stopping around at
break-neck speed so you see everything. However, I do not like being in a different
hotel every night and on a different plane or bus every damn day.....I like a
relaxing holiday, not an endurance expedition. You have to expect a certain amount
of chaos when travelling to third world countries, but why make it worse??
Dehydration can be a real problem with lots of air travel in hot countries, so drink
plenty of bottled water, NOT tap water (especially not in India......!!!) Also,
avoid salads and ice-cream in dodgy countries, UNLESS you want to spend all holiday
welded to a bog seat !!! After Hawaii, I have seen all my foreign eclipses.....I've been to eleven
Total Solar Eclipses now....after Hawaii, there was Peru in 1994, India in 1995, the Caribbean in 1998,
Cloudy Cornwall in 1999, Zimbabwe in 2001, Libya in 2006, Siberia in 2008, China (thru thin cloud) in 2009,
the South Pacific in 2010 and Spain in 2026. Peru was a great trip. India was
gruelling and the eclipse was short, but it was an amazing experience, although I was
glad to get home. The Caribbean eclipse trip was the best of the lot...a beautiful
eclipse from a beautiful setting (Knip Bay, Curacao) with great people, Scuba diving, and a very attractive Scuba dive
partner for a few days.....
Off
Scuba diving with my entertaining dive-buddy Beverley in the Caribbean!
Zimbabwe
was a superb eclipse but a depressing holiday. For most of the time I was just on my own, in hotels
where I knew nobody....a rather depressing experience. I like being on my own
in my house at home, but NOT when I am abroad in a dodgy country.
If a holiday is BAD,
I say so....I'm not one of these people who has to pretend everything is fantastic...
it doesn't always work like that and that was the case in Zimbabwe for most of the
time. Again, I was glad to get home. So, I've seen nine total solar eclipses now and had two
cloudy ones, Hawaii and Cornwall '99. For the latter one I was the BAA President and was
surrounded by 500 fellow BAA members on Aug 11th 1999. If every holiday could be like the 1998 Caribbean one, all would be great. I didn't want to come home from
that one (partly because it was back to work next day.....ugh...) On three of my eclipse
trips (Chile, India and Curacao '98) the Queen guitarist Brian May was on the
same eclipse tour.
Posing
with Rock Giant Brian May on the Chile-Peru border in November 1994.
I also bumped into him at Patrick Moore's Venus Transit party
in June 2004. He is a genuinely nice, surprisingly quiet chap, but always fails to bring his guitar and
amplifiers along........much to everyone's disappointment ;-))))
There are a lot of pictures floating around showing Brian, Chris Lintott and Patrick Moore on that
Venus Transit day.....almost all are mine.....stolen!! The picture in the front of BANG! is mine,
but with no credit and no payment ever coming my way....despite huge sales...... Typical!
QUEEN - Hammer to Fall
I also went on a second comet photography trip to Tenerife (to see comet
Hyakutake in March 1996) and three Leonid meteor trips (1998 Darjeeling...an utter
disaster; 1999 Sinai...a great success; and 2001 Palau (in the Pacific), a great holiday).
Now that I'm self employed and have a very healthy financial situation, I could do
a lot more travelling of the world. But the problem is always one of who to travel
with, so as to really have a great time. I would not enjoy travelling on my own, so
I tend to stick to the big events where I go to the big Total Solar Eclipse expeditions
with the same company (Explorers, now Astro Trails). That way, I usually end up with a crowd of people
I know....I was on a Mediterranean Cruise for the 2006 Eclipse.....at least you
can't split everyone up on a ship (unless it hits an iceberg) !!! For the 2008 eclipse I travelled to Russia with Voyages Jules Verne which worked very well.
There are humorous accounts of all my foriegn astronomy trips on my Total Solar Eclipse page. When my father was in his late 80s and 90s I was loathe to travel on foreign holidays in case
something happened to him while I am away. Some people seem a bit baffled by this, but, well, just let me live by my higher moral standards, please! After my father's
death I resumed eclipse travelling for the 2026 Spain eclipse.
Telescope Reviews
One of my real gripes is 'Telescope Reviews' especially in astro magazines and web forums. In every
other field (cars, cameras etc....) reviewers of products call a spade
a spade. But in some US astro mags and forums a telescope review is always good if the
manufacturer funds a lot of adverts in the mag or online. This is unique to
astronomy and is simply corrupt. There are some telescopes drives (and the odd mirror)
out there that are simply CRAP but are given good reviews because of
income from advertising revenue. There were even some dodgy telescope ads that quoted
Patrick Moore as endorsing their products, when he had never properly tested them!!!
Patrick was too frail in his 80s to observe anything other than naked eye stuff
since the start of the 21st century......
In my experience the best affordable
telescopes are made by Skywatcher and Celestron. I would strongly
recommend their products as both good AND affordable. You only rarely meet anyone who has had a bad experience with a
Celestron SCT or a Skywatcher product. The big C14s on a sturdy mount (CGE, Losmandy, Astrophysics or Paramount) are a real joy to own. I have a lot more to say
about this subject on the Equipment/Telescopes page. UK C14 owners, apart from myself, include Tom Boles, Mark Armstrong, Damian Peach,
Dave Tyler
and Pete Lawrence. They are just a brilliant big-aperture optical package, especially for planets.
My proudest achievements are:-
The BAA's 55th President 1997-1999
With the BAA Council
in my last year as President....Eclipse Year, 1999.
The BAA Goodacre Award 2000
Asteroid 7239 named 'Mobberley'
Ten 'Sky at Night' appearances (3 as the sole guest)
Preparing to film a 'Sky at Night' with Sir Patrick Moore
My 10 astronomy books (plus 3 children's Space books)
Discovering a nova in M31 on Dec 18th 2003
Being a qualified PADI Open Water Scuba Diver
Me
in Scuba Gear on the Caribbean island of Bonaire
Some of my sources of inspiration, friends, and leading UK astronomers are:-
My Dad, Squadron Leader Denys Mobberley AFC
My late Mum, still a huge inspiration
The late Sir Patrick Moore
Guy Hurst (Editor of 'The Astronomer')
Tom Boles, Ron Arbour and Mark Armstrong (Supernova Discoverers)
Damian Peach (World No. 1 Planetary Imager)
Gary Poyner (World No. 1 Variable Star Observer)
Peter Birtwhistle (NEO Astrometrist Extraordinaire)
A wide variety of 1960s - 1990s music.
The novels of Stephen King, Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds & Neal Asher
Dr Who episodes, especially those of the Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee & Tom Baker era
The books & philosophy of Richard Dawkins
Stand up comedians/comedy writers esp. Spike Milligan, Billy Connolly, Jethro, Ken Dodd, Jack Dee, Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, plus classic radio comedy shows of years gone by like 'Round the Horne', 'Hancock's Half Hour'
and 'The Goon Show'. And, of course, the 1930s astronomer and film star, Will Hay.
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