Welcome to Observations by me, Lisa Harvey.

I’ve never been a typical girl.

A microscope, and a chemistry set, and a well read set of encyclopedias were my toys, as well as a sewing machine. I climbed trees, rode bikes and walked along railway tracks.

Back then girls didn’t usually become scientists, or pilots, or pretty much anything I was interested in.

I went into technology. My first job was programming cash registers in hex. The kind that were built with a lot of empty space in the box because people would never believe something small would do those clever things.

I had a great career in Information Technology which started before smartphones, before the WWW, and before people had emails. I used to write a letter on a nice piece of paper, address an envelope, lick a stamp, and send it on it’s way. It would be weeks before it was legitimate to ask “why haven’t they responded?”

Paper tapes, punched cards and even those big old 8” floppy disks were part of my tech career. I programmed, I taught, I consulted, I managed data centres and worked with room size mainframes. I made a business, to consulted some more, built websites and created jobs. I worked with the highest levels of government and created things that helped people change the world.

I studied Geography, but astronomy was always my passion.

And writing.

So now I write about astronomy. Amateur astronomy, not the professional kind.

I do that here, and in the Everyday Astronomers Community.

You’ll find me on Twitter @ourwidesky

I’m also creating beginner astronomy courses, starting with Getting Started with Astronomy.

Observations is about how to observe, what to observe, and some of my thoughts about the sky, space exploration, and life on Earth.

I took that photo in a very remote place on the Nullabor Plain in Western Australia. There are few words to describe the sky I saw there. A sky likes this you remember as a feeling, as being breathless as you look up, as your vision drifts out to the depths of the barely believable depths above.

In Observations you’ll find some technology, maybe some trains, definitely planes, geography, science fiction, and possibly something controversial or crafty. There will always something about the night sky.

Fortnightly, mostly. Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.

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Everyday Astronomers. Discover your universe.

People

Astronomy. Geography. Writing. Online Communities. Targeting carbon neutral.