Harry was introduced into astronomy in 1967 by members of the ASNSW travelling North to Tennant Creek in order to observe M31 and other northern objects at a favourable altitude.
Having been shown through a member' 6" Newtonian telescope, Harry was hooked, started a subscription to Sky & Telescope, and read every book in the Mechanics Institute Library at nearby Oodnadatta.
His first telescope was a 60mm refractor, but Harry aspired to bigger things and set about building the biggest telescope in Coober Pedy.
Carefully cutting out a section of rock containing potch/opal of little colour or commercial value, Harry cut out a 20" disc, and making his own version of a hindle machine, started grinding with six grades of finely sieved desert sand, aided by an early edition of Texerou.
He built his own Foucault tester, searched a car wrecking yard at Port Augusta until he found a wing mirror from a 1961 Vanguard Utility which was almost an optical flat, and after several months of hard work, finishing with star testing, had a fully functional set of optics for a 20" f/6.
Polishing was done using tar laps on those winter nights when the temperature was just right to get the correct hardness, the polishing agent being finely ground bull-dust from beside the local movie theatre.
In this pre-dobson era, Harry opted for a mount using a mirror cell welded out of light rail track (from abandoned mines) and set in a surplus council concrete mixer from which Harry had carefully chipped the hardened concrete.
The skeleton tube was finely crafted out of West Australian Jarrah, and an elaborate gear train, which included two Limited Slip Differentials, seven gearboxes, and various pieces of three mountain bikes completed the drive mechanism. Mr Janos silvered the optics himself using silver nitrate.
The dry, non-polluted desert air is so clean that thirty years later, the surface remains untarnished. His eyepieces and finder came from three pairs of binoculars in various states of disrepair.
Since its inauguration, Harry has used the scope every clear night, sometimes from the bottom of a 20m shaft to avoid stray light and wind vibration (see image left).
He has observed all the Messier objects visible from his latitude, and similarly with NGC objects. Harry has discovered 9 comets, but unfortunately the mail is so slow from Coober Pedy that the credit has gone to others with quicker means of communication. He is fond of planetary nebulae, and is of the opinion that his scope shows many more than appear in the catalogues.
Currently, Harry is working through the extended catalog of lesser Murrell objects, and hopes to see one some night.