Hello there,
Tuesday 10th, my family and I arrived safely in Australia to visit my sisters ranch in Luscombe (south of Brisbane).
As i explained in an earlier topic;
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=133060 this time is my first visit to your continent. Thus far I love it over here! The landscapes, the clean air, the people, and of course these wonderful skies.
This is different "kettle of fish" as i discover on my first lookup:
Orion in the east. Seems familiar, but ..something's wrong. What's these stars doing up there above the belt? Then i realize; Orion ia upside–down !
Consequently; Hyades is not to the right, but at left handside. And there; little Pleiades. Also upside down! Which is a very strange thing to see actually!
It took me some time to get acquainted with the new constellations: Eridanus, Pavo, Pisces Austrinus, Tucana and my favourite; beautiful Grus. I consider this constellation an "enhanced" version of our own northern Cygnus.
Two instruments i brought along from Netherlands: a 24,5 cm F/5 traveldobson and a 10x50 binocular.
After two days at my sisters place I left for the starparty at Duckadeng at Friday the 13th....
I met two fellows over there; newbie Kim and oldskool Tom Summers.
Because of bad weather predictions no-one else showed up. A wrong decision, because this badluck-Friday became a glorious night of observing!
Amazing amount of darkness all around, no hint whatsoever of lightpollution from Brisbane, and an SQM value of 21,70 !
Here below a list of my favorite objects observed that night:
Lagoon M8; i call this one the Cheering Koala, (the belly being Open cluster 6540 and the eyes being the two bright stars. The dark lane being the arms and completed by two hazy ears)
Ngc 6723 & R Cra nebula. Wonderful combination of globular and streaks of nebulosity around two bright stars, all in one field !
Bochum 13; uninteresting small OS, but what is the identity of that nice nebulosity beside it?? ( i later learned this to be the Cat's Paw. NGC 3664)
Ngc 6352. Subtle globular, not resolved at 192x though some loose stars in the outskirts.
Ic 4615. Intriguing object! Nice OS in M pattern surrounded by dark lanes and more licht streeks around it. Almost looked like a galaxy. It reminds me of Globular M4.
Pgc60391. Spiral gx mag 12,8. Very weak, but low in the sky. Still amazing that such an obscure catalog object is quite visible.
M54. Very small, not resolved at 100x. (Later on i learned this is due to the large distance, m54 being not a member of our galaxy, but belonging to the SagDeg Dwarf).
Small Magelannic Cloud. Looks promising at bare sight, but at 45x the galaxy itself did show not many details , but I admit; all my attention was drawn away by ......
47 tucanae : splendidly resolved even at low magnifications. ngc 101 alongside is just fun to compare with (not resolved) .
Ngc 362; unfortunately missed that because of clouds.
Ngc 55. Between clouds. Wonderful and large Galaxy. Longstretched like our northern Ngc 4565, and M82 and M 108, but ngc55 is less irregular.
Ic 4662. A kind of Mirachs ghost. Residing near bright red Eta Pavoris (mag 3,5). This galaxy is more interesting though than Mirach. Irregularly shap. One arm can be seen curving around two stars mag 13.
Pluto; this area being all New Horizons to me, i decide i should try Pluto.
Even though at 9 degrees above this new horizon, it is still visible.
Ngc 6397 . Nice compact globular, amazing amount of bright stars. How is that possible?
Are these foreground-stars? Being that bright I cannot image they are members of the globular itself. I even suspect this could be an open cluster exacly in the line of sight of the far away globular....
Sigma Octantis. Had to find this one: the south polar star. Did take quite a long starhop with the bare eye.
And then....... Everything changed. An important moment in my life was about to happen....
I point the telescope towards the LMC. I move my towards the eyepiece (Explore 20mm ultrawide) and.... my jaw drops to the ground!!
The whole area is spreaded with nebulosity, starfields, dark lanes, tiny clusters, globulars even and than..... The Tarantula nebula. What a monster!!!
A gasping mouth of light and darkness, aggresively opened up, ready to devour anything that looks at it.... This is unparalelled!!
It even looks more spectacular than the great Orion Nebula....
For almost an hour I am scanning the whole LMC, and everytime I return back to the Tarantula. using several filters and magnifications , but in the end, the best view is unfiltered Ethos 13mm (96x).
An amazing beauty!
--To be continued--
,Looking forward to the forthcoming installments
