Continued enjoyment of visual observing with age-related deterioration of eyesight.

Presenter(s): Joe Cali

Affiliation(s): AAQ

Session details: Sunday, 2026-04-05 01:00:00

Abstract

In addition to many diseases and conditions that only affect some people, a few inescapable age-related factors affect all observers vision as we age. These are decreased maximum pupil dilation, low-light sensitivity, and rate of dark adaption. By understanding these problems, older observers can implement observing techniques, behaviours and hygiene measures to minimise the deleterious effects on observing enjoyment. Supplementary material For anyone wanting more information about Joe Cali’s talk, the link below to Joe’s web page has links to a series of short articles covering the material / subject areas in the talk, the slides in PDF format, and an excel spreadsheet for generating light loss tables as equivalent smaller telescope apertures of the type displayed during the talk. All files can be downloaded from Joe’s web site at this URL: – https://joe-cali.com/NACAA/

Biography

Joe Cali began his journey in astronomy as a teenager in the 1970’s. He ground, polished and constructed a 6" reflector in those first years that's still in regular use today and also uses an 18" f5.4 Dobsonian as his prime observing instrument at his Bortle 1-2 dark sky property and retirement residence in the rural region between Young, Cowra, and Grenfell where he hosts deep sky observing weekends for groups of friends throughout the year. His interests are broad and include visual observation of deep sky and planets, astrophotography including nightscape photography, aurorae, and deep sky. He teaches nightscape astrophotography workshops through the Photoaccess Arts Centre in Canberra. Joe has observed 15 total solar eclipses over 30 years on six continents and written and photographed feature articles about solar eclipses for both Sky and Telescope (USA) and the Australian Geographic Society Magazine. He's currently serving on the council of the AAQ, is an administrator on the 50, 000 member Aurora Australis NSW/ACT/SA Facebook group, and a moderator on the Sky Searchers astronomy forum. Now in his sixties, he has witnessed the deterioration in his own vision with age over the past 15 years and has researched and developed techniques to minimise the effect of that deterioration on his enjoyment of deep sky observing.