Greetings from Southern California

Hello from Thousand Oaks, very glad to see there's a thriving Irish astro-community on the web! I joined on the suggestion of Keith Geary, and I suppose this is my intro. I'm from Tipperary and have lived in California since August 1985, and if anyone suggests that that's almost 20 years I will take offence because I can't possibly be that old.

I have an 8" LX200 SCT with a piggybacked Orion ED80mm refractor, and my main interest besides bad golf is digital-camera astrophotography. Last year I went insane and built a roll-off-roof shed which I grandly refer to as an observatory. It's great to have a 'house' for all the stuff and startup time is just a few minutes.

I started imaging with film in 2000 (bad experience :shock: ), then discovered the Nikon Coolpix and moved on to a Canon D60 and then to (currently) a 10D and a Toucam. Even having pursued this hobby for four years or so, my pictures are still fairly rudimentary compared to some of what's out there. But the equipment is low-budget enough too so I suppose the pictures are not too bad. I don't have a real website but I do house an image list at home.earthlink.net/~dslattery1/images which I update from time to time.

Anyway nice to 'meet' all of you. I hope to relocate back to Tipperary a few years from now and will be keeping an eye on things here to learn a bit more about the Irish astro-scene.

Cheers,

-- Denis Slattery

hi Denis,

good to here from you . . . welcome to the board! I'm from Dromineer myself (outside Nenagh) but am in Dublin a couple of decades . I was in L.A. and San Francisco over the Christmas to visit the sisters there (awful lot of rain this time ). Hope to head back over again in May for the Riverside Astro-Expo near Big Bear City. Might see you there!

John (Flannery)

Some of your pics are rudimentary?
Some of them are so good I'm beginning to wonder if you have some sort of space craft...

Hi Denis,

Welcome to the club.
Very good pictures. The detail on mars is incredible.

Are you polar mounted?
Regards
Jouke

Welcome aboard Denis! You're well equipt!, I've been looking at some of your shots, they're great!

Keith..

Welcome aboard Denis. Those are indeed excellent images you have there. You must come over here sometime soon and show us what we're all doing wrong!
Clear skies,