Welcome to My astronomy website

My name is Ryan Parle and I live near Bristol in the southwest of England (51° 25 N 2° 44 W)

In the early summer of 2007 I found a real interest in astronomy there were several factors that got me interested, since childhood I've always had an interest in all things to do with space, I've never really known much about the night sky but it always amazed me. When I was at school my maths teacher, Mrs Merry invited our class to her house on a summers evening to observe Jupiter, the moment I looked through the eyepiece and saw Jupiter there with some of its moons I just wanted a telescope, of course being only 13 or 14 at the time I could not afford much more than a toy telescope, so, until recently I never owned a telescope

The biggest influence and the turning point for me was the beautiful open cluster M45, The seven sisters. I noticed the cluster one night walking home from a friend’s house, as I got home I immediately found my old 10x50 binoculars and then walked down the road to a field out of the way of the streetlights. I spent the rest of the night marveling at the beauty of the night sky. I didn’t really know where to look for interesting views so I spent a lot of time just looking at the seven sisters and just scanned the sky looking out for anything that stood out.

About 2 months after I found the M45 I decided it was time to invest in a telescope, I joined the Bad Astronomy & Universe Today forum where I was given lots of friendly advice after a couple of weeks researching in to different telescopes I decided to take the jump, I bought myself a Skywatcher Explorer 150 f/8 (1200mm focal length) on an EQ3-2 mount, more about that in the equipment pages.

The content of this website will be added to gradually as I progress through the continuous journey of learning the night sky, all my latest images will be posted in the gallery section, each object I image will have a short description and information to help you find it in the night sky. In future I hope to have tutorials that will be usefull to both visual observers and astroimagers.

Weather in Nailsea provided by 7Timer

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. To check out the official Website click the picture below.

I am a member of Bristol Astonomical Society. If you live in the bristol area and are interested in astronomy please check out the website.