My friends (Ms Dob and Mr ED) and I just got back from our little trip. I'm exhausted and feverish (you know the kind
) but I've had a magnificent time. I ended up observing at the Albert Gap carpark along the road up to Lake Mountain (few kms from the summit). It's a very large flat bit of gravel at 1250m altitude. Because the area is so big it's perfect for observing, you can see in every direction down to 15-20 degrees above the horizon. Great site just 100km from Melbourne!
Everything was just about perfect. Early in the night I could feel a bit of dampness on the scopes, table & chairs, but then the everything dried up stayed dry for the whole night. I didn't pack up till twilight.
Skies were nice and dark. Maybe I could still see some skyglow from Melbourne, but I could see stars marked mag 6 on my charts and I'm short sighted. Here through the ED80, 47Tuc looked like it does through the 200mm Dob from my backyard. Dark skies rock!
I spent most of the night hunting galaxies. Never seen so many! For the first time I actually saw the spiral arms of a galaxy. NGC 1365. Took me a while with different eyepieces and averted vision, but then there they were. Two arms curved counter-clockwise. I was absolutely ecstatic.
I also revisited old favourites and spent some time with LMC and SMC. Mars and Saturn looked pretty good too at over 200x, with lots of surface detail on both and a sharp Cassini division on the rings. Not quite up to Snake Valley standards but still pretty good seeing compared with what I'm used to. I think the altitude must have helped a lot.
Gone bushwalking along "The Beeches" tracks today to top off a great w/e. We don't appreciate how lucky we are in this wonderful land of Oz.
Sorry for the lengthy post, I'm still hyped.
