Martin Pugh, Australia

Martin Pugh's interest in astronomy coincided with the overwhelming appearance of Comet Hale Bopp in 1997. However, he did not purchase his first telescope and specialist camera until 1999. Inspired by the handful of amateur astrophotographers around at the time, learning and practicing this art form continued over the next few years until the next major equipment upgrade occurred in 2004; just prior to emigrating to Australia.

Then, under dark skies and with his own roll-off roof observatory at his rural property in Yass, astrophotography began in earnest. Martin was able to put all of the theory into practice and secured his first NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on 1 Jun 2006. Since then, Martin has secured 49 APODs (3 collaboratively and 4 using Hubble Legacy Archive data).

In addition, he has been placed in the following competitions:

• 2008 South Pacific Star Party - Winner
• 2008 The David Malin Awards - Deep Sky and overall competition winner.
• 2009 Astronomy Photographer of Year (Royal Observatory Greenwich) Deep Sky and overall competition winner.
• 2010 Astronomy Photographer of Year (Royal Observatory Greenwich) Runner-up - Deep Sky.
• 2011 The David Malin Awards - Deep Sky winner.
• 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year (Royal Observatory Greenwich) Deep Sky and overall competition winner.
• 2013 The David Malin Awards - Deep Sky and overall competition winner.

Furthermore, his images have appeared in many science publications, magazines, and videos all over the world and more recently one of his images was also used to create the special effects in the blockbuster movie 'Interstellar'.
There are also a few 'crowning moments' of note, particularly:

• The release of a 3-stamp collectors set by Australia Post, to mark the 2009 International Year of Astronomy, which featured Martin's image of M78.
• Recognition and placement in the SBIG Hall of Fame.
• Placement of two images (M27 and IC434) in 'Starstruck' The Art of Astrophotography exhibition (Bates College Museum of Art).

After 39 years of Naval Service, Martin has now retired and established his own remote imaging, data subscription and telescope hosting business from his home in Yass.

You can see more work on his website at: http://www.martinpughastrophotography.space

Since 2009 the conference takes place every 2 years and is a growing event that sees more international attendees each time. The second CEDIC in 2011 for example had more than 150 participants from 20 countries, including lecturers from South and North America, and the Middle East.
We appreciate the fact, that we could always invite an internationaly well known key-speaker for each conference and we want to express our gratitude to Lars Lindberg Christensen (2009, ESO) R. Jay Gabany (2011, USA), David Malin (2013, Australia), Don Goldman (2015, USA) and Adam Block (2017, USA) for contributing to our conference!

The conference offers two days of lectures and workshops and altough the main focus is deepsky imaging also other interesting topics of astrophotography are covered. For example: TWAN stile photography, timelapse photography, planetary imaging, comet imaging, scientific astronomy, etc. Beside the lectures there is also a lot of time to visit the booths of our partners, where one could find a lot of fine astro equipment. But there is also enough time for small talks and expert discussions - after all, communication across local borders is one of the main concepts of the CEDIC. Maybe this is one of the reasons why most of the conference attendees also join the traditional Conference Dinner on Saturday evening, a good possibility of meeting astrophotographers (and friends) from all over the world, exchanging not only knowledge but also hanging around together and have fun.

We are already looking foreward to CEDIC '19 which is scheduled for March 15-17, 2019 in Linz, Austria.

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