The Astronomical Society
of New South Wales Incorporated
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Travelling Astronomer

Darling of the Hawkesbury Astronomical Society, Richmond Windsor has just returned from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, where he was busy observing far northern objects with his travelling 12 inch dobsonian. He found that last October all of the brighter globular clusters in M31 were easily seen as the galaxy was very high indeed.

From latitude 18°S, he said he could easily see all but a handful of the more famous northern Messiers and being in the Kimberleys, with an area as big as Texas but a population of less than thirty thousand, it was very easy to find a dark site, providing you did not mind sharing it with wild pigs, Taipans, Crocodiles and other noxious reptiles.

On his return trip in his famous FJ Holden Ute, he dropped in to Dunedoo to observe for a few nights with equally famous Emmanuel Snodgrass and to buy a few of his surplus tiger snakes to act as rat catchers in his barn on his farm at Wilberforce.

Richmond made several valuable suggestions to Emmanuel, including the idea of putting a red-dot finder on the finder scope attached to his binocular Telrads.

As nothing generating comparable excitement had happened in Dunedoo since the great cart-horse dysentery epidemic of 1892, and no other famous people ever condescend to actually stay at Dunedoo, town dignitaries were quick to arrange a Civic Reception for Richmond in the Mechanics Institute Hall, where after a sumptuous dinner of spit-roasted hairy-nosed wombat and hard-boiled potato he was presented with the symbolic keys to the town - actually in very practical fashion the keys to the toilets at the local service station, but gold plated and mounted on a handsome mulga wood shield.

Richmond will give an account of his travels during the next field night of the Hawkesbury Society held in the car park of the Pub just over the road from Richmond McDonalds.

Visitors from other clubs are cordially invited to attend and to consume all the beer they can keep down (and pay for).