Furzehill Observatory
51 35 49N 04 05 50W
I'm Ian Miller and I've been a keen amateur astronomer since the mid 1960s when I joined the, now defunct, Cardiff based Cambrian Astronomical Society.
Later, in about 1968, I joined the Swansea Astronomical Society (SAS) and served on that society's Council in various posts from 1972 until 1986. During this time, I also introduced and edited the SAS Circular which was instigated to support and report the member's observations but, as this was their only publication at that time, it soon ended up reporting most of SAS's other activities too. Whilst I was the society's Director of Observations I also arranged many meteor watches which occasionally included teams from other astronomical societies so that we could determine the heights and speeds of the Meteors. These combined watches were sometimes reported in The Astronomer magazine and in our local newspaper, the South Wales Evening Post.
In 1970 I became a member of the British Astronomical Association (BAA) primarily so that I could join their Variable Star Section. I lectured on astronomical topics for the Extra-mural Department of the University College of Swansea from 1979 until 1984 and was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1979 until 1989.
Like many practical amateur astronomers of my generation, I opted to make some of the equipment that I needed to pursue this hobby, including a 26cm F5 parabolic mirror for my third telescope in 1976. I also built a photoelectric photometer in the early 1980s, but failed to make any useful observations with it. Throughout the 1970s and early 80s I designed, built and operated many small radio telescopes for myself and, during 1982, a larger phase-switching interferometer for the SAS at Fairwood, near Swansea. I also played a leading role in the acquisition, dismantling and reconstruction of a fully steerable 9 metre dish antenna which a joint SAS/Swansea University team brought from Jodrell Bank to Fairwood in 1983-4.
Over the years I have built four observatories (in 1968, 1970, 1986 and 2005) for my own use and helped build several other private observatories and SAS’s Fairwood Observatory. I also aided in the discovery and initial restoration of the Penllergaer Observatory, built circa1850, the second oldest astronomical observatory in Wales.
After retiring from my job as a Shift Chemist in the BP Oil Refinery at Llandarcy in 1999, I moved to a darker sky site and started making CCD observations of variable stars in 2006. Soon afterwards, following a request from the BAA's Variable Star Section Director Roger Pickard, I volunteered to maintain the section’s sequence database. I also joined the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) in 2008 and the Center for Backyard Astrophysics (CBA) in 2018.
Nowadays I mainly observe cataclysmic variable stars and regularly work with a number of amateur and professional research groups in the UK, USA, Poland, Russia and Japan. My observer codes are MZ (BAAVSS), MIW (AAVSO) and IMi (VSNET).
Some useful homepages
SAS. http://www.swanastro.org.uk
BAAVSS. http://www.britastro.org/vss/
AAVSO. http://www.aavso.org/
VSNET. http://www.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/
CBA. http://www.CBA@cbastro.org">www.CBA@cbastro.org/
