Very good. Share and share alike. I spent months on those charts.
I am shifting over my site where those maps are this last few
weeks and have technical stuff down just now but hope to have the site back up
www.astrospotter.com by next weekend or so. I changed over from one web provider to another and there is some grief with the fixed IP address. It will be sorted out.
Much of the detailed charts there came from NGC/IC project. I have been fortunate enough to observe with a small group of guys one of which is Steve Gottlieb and I have learned so very much from Steve who was involved with NGC/IC project for supplying observations and some research. He went down to your area in November and asked if I wanted to go but I just could not go. He had 3 real good nights and a couple not so good nights last Nov 9 or so with the fine folk that run that 'Way Deep South Texas Star Party' down near Sliding Springs your way. Sorry I am not quite right on that star party name. I am sure you know those guys who do that big star party, John B might be one of them. This Nov they had a small version of the annual larger one that is around mid-year or so.
I had a blast with all those charts and when I got down to Arkaroola I had been studying for a few months so the sky and where the 'best of' objects were was drilled into my head.
For the LMC I STILL got lost a couple times by following the wrong cluster and so on. In the LMC one does not star hop as much as one 'object hops'. I will return that is for sure, just a bit tricky being so far.
I had my computer down there too but because I had so much I wanted to do I basically worked mostly off of the big wide telrad charts and then in the LMC worked off of the 2-sheet map and the detailed object maps when I got to complicated areas. 5 days and I only scraped the surface with very fast observations (except on the real showpiece objects).
That LMC is really one heck of a playground.
You guys have fun and I'll be missing your skies every dark night.
Clear Skies,
Mark