Greetings from Old South Wales

[Mkv]

Hello,

In 2005-2006 I was a young lad, 16-17 or so, and I was interested in the skies. Read space news on a daily basis, was playing a lot of OrbiterSim, had APOD as my homepage.

Eventually I saved enough money for a telescope and bought myself a Skywatcher (probably Explorer) 130mm with 900mm focal length and a spherical mirror.

My fondest memory was accidentally seeing the ISS whizz past while looking through the telescope, it was a great bright thing and obviously I did not see any detail, just a bright point. Only afterwards I figured out it was the ISS when I checked on a website or through some software.

I was inexperienced, and only a few weeks ago I realised that the telescope had an equatorial mount, and back then I was just using it as an alt-az mount.

I moved to UK just a year or two later, and I had to leave the telescope behind. My aunt has kept it safe and has still got it.

Fast forward to late 2023, I've settled down, got a house on a mortgage, two young children running about. And the sky watching bug bit me again. First I bought a Bresser Messier 5", understood what's good and what's bad about it, and just more than a week ago got myself a used Skywatcher Flextube 250p.

Now I want to motorise the 250p using OnStep, want to build a small telescope for my 3 year old using cheap mirrors from AliExpress, perhaps make my own mirror one day, etc. So I thought it would be good to join a community, and here I am  

based north of Cardiff, close to the A470

[bosun21]

Hi, welcome to SGL 👋.

[Floater]

Welcome. I hope you have lots of fun. 🙂

[Bugdozer]

Welcome! 

[Xsubmariner]

Welcome to SGL. You will find a lot of useful information within the forum threads.

[Sunshine]

Welcome to the lounge!

[Pete Presland]

Hi welcome to SGL from Pete in Bedfordshire 🙂