The sky’s the limit

How and why did you first get into astrophotography?

In the early 1970s, when I was 10 or 11 years old, I became fascinated with the universe. It was very much the space-race era, with the first man walking on the moon, the first spaceships landing on Mars and the Voyager spacecraft flying past the big planets. I remember asking my grandmother to get me a telescope for Christmas, and eventually, after much begging, she did [leading to the e-book Australian Night Sky, by Paul and his partner, Sylvia Mayo, being dedicated to the memory of his grandmother, Dorothy Ashman].

One of the main reasons I’ve always done this type of photography is to be able to show the pictures to other people and share my fascination. To say, ‘This is what’s out there, right above your