I know how you felt. When I joined the Army in 79, Jim Irwin Apollo 15 Lunar Module pilot visited our barracks in Folkestone. He was there to spread the message of God, a lot of astronauts became deeply religious after see the earth at distance. I followed him around like a puppy asking question of his moon landing and other stories he would tell. Shaking his hand meant a lot to me. He died in 1991. I became interested in astronomy after my dad bought me a telescope when I was a kid. It cool looking at Jupiter and the Galilean moons, bet you have good seeing in your part of the world. James Irwin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You're not wrong Dave. Some places are better than others. North Devon is particularly good but you have to be careful of the Chuds. I live right on the estuary so if you can get away from street lights it's not bad from about 20 degrees above the horizon. I use a little Mead go-to 70mm refractor and an ancient 6" reflector that's seen better days. The Mead is great as it fits perfectly into my Temba camera kit rucksack and you can use it quite well without it's tripod so I can wazz out into the wilds with it quite easily when the viewing's good. Star Walk on my ipad makes set up even easier than the Meade software does. Kudos on meeting Irwin. The Apollo crews were gods to me in my youth and have still got a, literal, other worldliness about them. I heard a great story about Armstrong going to teach engineering at a university and was questioned by the fact that with only the US Navy and NASA on his resume, it seemed a bit 'thin'.
Great pic Remal ... but I would really like to see what happened next Prob the same as your signature pic
was a pic I found via Trails on FB. seen the Repsol and thought of this thread I bet they land perfect
It's well documented on here that I have an issue with heights and am not the most comfortable of flyers, but I would kill each and everyone of you to get to the front of the queue to walk on the surface of the moon. The third shot down is said to be the only full body shot of Armstrong during Apollo 11's stay and he is the photographer, reflected in Aldrin's visor. There's an urban myth that it was because Aldrin was still pissed at not being allowed to be the first man to step on the surface that he didn't take any pictures of his commanders moonwalk, but I doubt he could be that petty. There are thousands of negs that NASA have never printed and the originals were all copied before they were printed anyway so we've yet to see the best quality of them yet. Now if only they would let me into their vault with a couple Nikon LS 9000's...........
Ha that mouse looks as happy as the frog .Nice to see things like this when we are currently living in a mist of gloom.
