What a fantastic long weekend.
And great company to go with it.
From where I was looking ( as I lay back and soaked up the beautiful Queensland sunny winter weather) the
Astrofest was a roaring success in viewing and intercultural activities. IceInSpace was well represented with at least 14 members taking in the opportunity for a meet and greet.
After a one and a half hour
last Thursday I arrived at Camp Duckadang, Linville on the the very upper reaches of the Brisbane river. All the while watching
skittering around the sky. It didn't look like a promising first night. h0ughy, Alan, Rob, Ron and Andrew were already there looking very settled in and I'm sure I heard someone say "Ya shoulda been here last night"
Apparently the skies were fantastic. Not looking good for tonight. Yep it
on my
Not to worry It was great to catch up with some unfamiliar faces and just chew the fat. Early night to bank up the sleep credits, as the forecast was for a cracker following two nights.
Friday morning. Another perfect day in paradise. Wasn't even too cold last night. Rain was good for something then. Time to explore the equipment on exhibit. WOW
Niiiice.
And that 40" dob is a work of art. The day was given over to looking at equipment catching up with friends and chatting and making new ones. You meet the nicest people at these fests. Everyone wants to chat about their equipment and find out what you do, and no ones equipment is better than anyone elses. Though I think I did detect the odd bit of scope envy here and there.
One of the highlights of the day was the opening of the venders stalls. Astronomy Online, Sirius Optics, York Optical, Wildcard Innovations, our own Eddie T with some awesome photographs, plus a couple of others I am
to admit I can't remember. I resisted temptation, I left the building, went back, left then decided to go back and get that erecting 9x50 finderscope I couldn't do without. Well I didn't have one for my Orion.
I nearly bought the beautiful 8x50 illuminated reticle finderscope but even I couldn't justify that to myself then. I can now but not then
The night rolled around and delivered everything the beautiful day had promised. Crystal clear skies,
a glowing milky way, very minimal sky glow from Bris Vegas and a rather brisk feel to the air, that only got briskier,
and briskier
and briskier
By midnight it was well on its way to negative degrees. By the time I decided it was cold enough to go to bed the temp had dropped to -2 and there was a quarter inch of ice on the roof of the cars. The temp eventually reached -3 just before dawn. Fwoooor!!!! Damn it was cold in that sleeping bag.
Dawn and another day in paradise starts. More scope checking, more chatting, more lectures and presentations (I forgot to mention the two excellent presentations from last night. One on Nightvision myopia and one on evaluating historical Stellar catalues. There were alos two during the day yesterday on "Secrets fo building your own Obsession" and "High resolution lunar and lantetary photography") For me the highlight of the day was purchasing an Argo Narvis to complete my mount setup. He's a smoooth talker that Gary Kopff. To think he nearly talked me out of it.
I think I'm in
. So you know what I spent the afternoon doing. Installing it
The second highest spot of the day came when jjjnettie and h0ughy cleaned up all comers in the counterweight tossing competition. Congratulations guys.
Excellent work. But h0ughy wasn't finished there. He even tried to clean up in the raffle draw that night after the Astrofeast. Missed out on the big prizes but I think he was still happy. There was an LX75 schmit newt, two 8" dobs, 8'nexstar, Meade DSI pro, Coronado PST, portrait photos by Eddie T, Nexstar imager (won by Alan) Celestron Binoculars (won by Grant). More stuff than I can remember. Then it was out to the evening sky.
I have very little idea what the others did that night as I considered myself the luckiest person there. Gary Kopff offered that afternoon to come over at night and help me set up my Argo Narvis. Well it didn't work out quite how we expected it to do. My dovetail plate appears to have a slight out of collimation issue (different to lense collimation) and it was the perfect opportunity for Gary and Mai to field test some new diagnostic firmware they have been developing. So for the next 5 or 6 hours I spent my time pushing my scope to the four corners of the sky with Gary and Mai experimenting, testing and trialling different aspects fo the new firmware. I was like a kid in a toy shop with the toymaker building something special just for me. It was excellent. Was it cold that night? Up until I went to be I had no idea. What a great night. Thanks again Gary and Mai. You guys rock.
Sunday morning finally came around, and I really didn't want to start to pack up. Chatted to more people, said my goodbyes to my fellow IceInSpacers as they left, and just generally mooched around slowly packing up and stowing things away. Finally drove out the gate at about 12:30, with a heavy heart but an enormous collection of wonderful memories.
Without a doubt this has been one of my most enjoyable weekends. SAS and BAS, the Lions Camp Duckadang, the venors and the rest of the coordinators excelled themselves. From my perspective the whole sheebang ran as smooth as clockwork. The accomodation, facilities and organization were in my mind superb. I know how I can tend to get carried away and mybe varnish the reality at times
, but not this time. First class is the only way I could describe it.
As I said up the top. I'll be back again next year. Hopefully for the full week.
Ah and BTW here's a couple of snap shots of the weekend. I didn't get many 'cos I was having too much fun.
and the temp of -3 deg celcius on friday saturday morning after an allnighter!!!
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
The nitty gritty details from an unbiased perspective
) They are likely to become collectors items.
