Hi All,
Thanks for the comments and I don't blame you for skimming (if you did).
I've been away for a week down the south coast catching up on some sleep and doing some full-moon binocular observing -- so I wasn't able to reply earlier.
For those who want to look for the highlights: There are some interesting Arp galaxies in there -- NGC 3509, IC 701, NGC 4861, and NGC 3836 -- which isn't in the Arp list but should be -- see the DSS pic. This quite peculiar looking eg would be a very interesting target for the Hubble Space Telescope I think.
I broke my ("normal" galaxy -- ie not QSO) distance record with PGC 32713 in Crater which has an R.V of +25133km/sec and assuming a Hubble Constant of 71km/sec/mpc equates to a distance of 1,153mly and it just happened by chance when I was looking at an adjacent eg -- NGC 3347.
And the other highlights included the NGC 4216 group of edge on spirals on the Virgo/Coma border, M100 and its retinue of dwarfs (I also saw indications of spiral structure in M100 for the first time), M98 and M99 and M a top-quality GC the north can be proud of.
Then there was the Boattini scare ...
The seeing was no better than okay during the four nights but the sky darkness was very good as evidenced by the SQM reading on the Friday of 21.84 and consistent 21.6-7s at most other times after 9.30pm. I never got a good look at Jupiter at all but Saturn was pretty good on the Friday around midnight holding x185 flawlessly and x247 occasionally.
Do I really take all those notes? Yep. If I hadn't have run out of recording space for night two when no notes were taken, I'd probably have recorded 250 objects for the weekend instead of 170-odd -- but it didn't do any harm to look at favourites either and to give some others a look at some showpieces like the Tarantula (NGC 2070, the Eta Carinae complex, M104, Centaurus A*, M83 etc, etc)
Besides forming part of the log once they are typed up, if you have a "system", it forces you too look hard and critically for detail that would be otherwise missed with a more casual glance. That is the other major reason for making notes. Drawing has a similar but probably even greater positive effect in this way. And the notes occasionally come in handy down the track ...
I hope to get back up to Mudgee again in either September or October -- I've got quite a bit of unfinished business in Pegasus, Andromeda and Cetus
Thanks again.
Best,
Les D
Contributing Editor AS&T