I was born in Australia and grew up in Sydney. Following and watching the Moon landings as a child is one of my strongest memories and I have been fascinated by astronomy and space ever since. As a teenager I built a pretty mediocre 150 mm (sorry - I only think in metric) Newtonian telescope. I knew my way around the southern skies pretty well - in those days the street lights were white and few and far between in the suburbs.

Although my first university degree was in physics, I elected to follow another passion as a career and became an airline pilot. This led me to leave Australia almost 11 years ago and move to the UK - although I hope to return to warmer weather and clearer skies eventually. Now I find myself struggling with different constellations, and even the ones I do recognise are upside down. Hurray for GOTO!.

At the moment a lot of my time is taken up with study for a Masters of Science in Astronomy degree through Swinburne University in Melbourne (http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/). If you are looking to exercise your grey matter and are up for a bit of a challenge and some hard work I thoroughly recommend it.

Other interests: Travel, photography, walking, keeping fit, just about any kind of science/technology, moving back to Australia.