In the year 1984 i got my first red colored refractor from my parents.

Not before my dad wrecked it in a carcrash.

My dad was fine as was the telescope. The scope was meanly used for looking at the moon, license plates and looking at rooftops and such.

When turning 19 years of age I purchased a 5″ newton telescope which I still own.

Through this telescope I first saw Jupiter and Saturn, this was quite an experience!

Then a long time nothing…

In 2009, both my father and I discussed the hobby again.

A lot of unknowns, so we became members of our local Astronomy Club (Saturnus in Nijmegen, the Netherlands). Not too long after thinking this through we decided that our main focus was going to be Astrophotography. In June we purchased a Meade 12″ on a fork mount. There it is, our first wrong purchase. The service of Meade in Germany was outstanding and we returned the scope and mount and bought only a 10″ Meade OTA.

Our first image shot with the Meade 12″ on a fork mount with a Canon 450D, the M27.

Our first equatorial mount was a Gemini G42, purchased in 2010. We had some bad luck with this mount and to cut a long story short we ended up with an Astro Physics 900 GTO in 2011 which is our pride and joy!

Also in 2011 we started building our garden observatory.

This took a while, about 6 months. All had to be done in our spare time.

All in good fun though!

Now we could aim for the pictures we always wanted to shoot, but not without

a cooled ccd camera. Another investment was needed, a QSI 583 WSG!

THIS OBSERVATORY IS GUARDED BY GOD AND A GERMAN SHEPHERD.

ENTER WITHOUT PERMISSION AND MEET THEM BOTH!

Sgt. Pepper in Action

Pakwerk Pepper