The waning gibbous Moon and the Stenness stone circle on Orkney.

Noctilucent clouds over Stonehenge - June 2009.

A minor auroral display at Stenness.

So, who the hell is Grant Privett? For those understandably desperate to know, I am an amateur astronomer currently based in Wiltshire. Not exactly Mauna Kea or La Palma but pretty good for southern England, which is just as well as my main observing interests are deep-sky.

Currently I am working as a physicist - specialising in image processing of various sorts - but I have in the past been employed as a professional astronomer/programmer. Increasingly, I find myself writing articles for magazines - which is fun though the deadlines always seem to fall on clear nights so it keeps me away from observing. To make matters even less clear, I have written a couple of books:

"I highly recommend it for beginners or for advanced imagers" - Sean Walker in Sky and Telescope.
"I would recommend this book" - Ed Sampson in Astronomy Now.
"An excellent overview of the subject" - Pete Lawrence in Sky at Night.
"Thank goodness thats finished." - Rachel Privett (still a relation - just)

The second was co-authored with Paul Parsons, Editor of Focus magazine and all round good bloke. Both books are available from Springer-Verlag.

"I would recommend it" - Alan Dowdell in Astronomy Now.
"Packs a lot of information" - Ken Hewitt-White in Sky and Telescope.

As you can see, I am, of course, totally impartial on this subject. In truth, I worked hard to make the books both useful and informative. I think I achieved it. If any of you have read one these books and wish to send me comments, please do so, they serve to make future editions even better.

Whatever else, its no surprise that my spare time is currently non-existent, but I am assured I can have a day of when I die.

However, given a choice I image with a Starlight MX7 chasing stupidly faint objects - Dwingeloo 1, Gyulbudaghians nebula, the HDF etc - rather than pretty stuff. Its clearly some sort of masochistic mental problem caused by lack of sufficient Smarties at some crucial phase of my childhood development - I generally hold the symptoms at bay using large doses of chocolate and coffee.

Alternatively, I sometimes observe with members of the Shropshire Astronomical Society - of which I am a far flung committee member. Favourite targets are generally deep-sky, planets and the Moon - as you would expect at public meetings.

The very lovely Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus. 10", F4.5, 150x 45s exposures.

Currently, I employ the Starlink Software data reduction set (running under cygwin) used by professionals throughout the world - it does everything but make the coffee. For image acquisition I use the AstroArt 4 software - thats very good value for the money and in my humble opinion is gaining on Software Bisque fast.

Anyway. I digress. The images I have taken are mainly with either an 8" or 10" F4.5 Newtonian reflector from home. The scope isnt GOTO or state of the art equipment, but the whole set up cost less than 1000UKP - about 30% of the UK price of a bog-standard LX200 or the cost of a couple of new Nagler eyepieces. Whatever the cost, I am happy with them as the fruit of cold nights without sleep. More can be found on the Shropshire Astronomical Society Web pages.

Comet Hale-Bopp. June 1996. Pixels 0.44". 5s exposure on 1m JKT scope at La Palma. Peter Boyce and Grant Privett

As to the usual boring tosh, I am 50 something, bald, tallish, and have blue eyes - the rest is, as Anne McCaffrey said, subject to change without notice. Just in case you really need to know, heres what Becky Thomas reckons happened as the years passed....

This page last modified 30th July 2009.