Lostock got lucky with the weather and they observed Thurs and Fri (on the Fri
they reported sucker holes until around 2am and then it cleared).
Remarkably, despite weather predictions, it did not rain there on Saturday night.
At sunset the skies were generally clear. A lightning storm dodged around the
site in the distance but the beautiful night afforded photographers the opportunity
to try and take reflections of the stars in a small pond, possibly to try and get in the running for
the 2012 David Malin Awards where the theme was announced by John Sarkissian
to be "symmetry". When we departed at around 10:40am, some high cloud had rolled
in by then but not far down the road toward Gresford it had cleared again so we
are hoping they got lucky up at Lostock as well.
Great to catch up with everyone. Nice to see Jeanette had made the trip from
Qld. Great to chat with Chris M, Mike Salway, Strongman Mike, Al, David Fitz-Henry,
John Sarkissian and so many others including some new faces.
Special thanks to Mike for the fantastic effort!
The RFS team did a wonderful job supplying dinners again. Thank you!
I had a great time. No scope, but that gave me the freedom to visit other people and just enjoy the company.
What a gorgeous night last night was! I hit the sack at about 12:30-ish knowing I'd have to drive today, but I would've liked to stay up longer. The frogs in the dam reminded me of home - except there weren't any Pocklebonks (Pobblebonks is the other dialect).
My finger tips are still tingling from playing guitar (serenading the frogs as Mike said).
Now... must find the camera and start on the data...
I'm home too! Been home for about an hour, still unpacking everything.
Had a massive storm on the F3 near newcastle on the way home. I was hoping it would wash the dust off the car but it wasn't to be.
Had a great time. Will report more later of course but last night was simply fantastic. Clear all night long with the exception of a hazy cloud that passed over at around 10pm and lasted about 30 minutes.
It's a shame that many people left early on Saturday (and those that didn't turn up at all) because of the weather predictions, they missed a great night/weerkend. But I guess with the weather that was predicted, it seemed a natural thing to do. Goes to show you never can trust the forecasts!
I wasn't expecting to get much in the way of clear skies after seeing the forecasts leading up to the event, but we had 2.5 clear nights out of 3. Simply brilliant!
Will report more later.
Have literally thousands upon thousands of images to go through (timelapses of course!), and hope to make an IISAC movie out of it
1. Father and son Mozzies!
2. Ditto.
3. The widow maker...
4. Clouds .
5. Single exposure over the imaging field.
6. Jupiter, The Pleiades, Hyades, etc.
7. A long exposure panorama of the river.
Had a great time. Fantastic night last night..... imaging with a new scope under dark skies, deafened by the frog cacophony at the pond, and plenty of good company. Even Fred appeared to enjoy himself. Looking forward to the next one. Thanks again to Mike and his helpers for organising.
cheers, Guy
hi all
home safe and sound after a fantastic long long weekend...!!!!!!
hopefully we didn't wake to many people this morning as it was a early rise to get lachlan to his party at 1pm. there was 1 person asleep with there feet hanging out there open door right behind my truck and when i started it up at 5.05am this morning it would have frightened the bee-jeezzz out of them who ever you were sorry...
it was great to finally meet more iiser's al sheeny at last, erick, alex thanks for the astro drawing gear for lachlan ,stan,ivan thanks for the puzzle for lachlan the pony clubbers ,chris amaroo..
mike once again thanks for a great camp your efforts are greatly appreciated and while staying in the house i didn't realise how much was involved see you in 2013 for the next...
tried to say by to people that have become friends but that last night was a cracker and we all were to busy with near perfect skies.
lachlan had the best time and is keen to do some sketching as is dad but i think he needs to catch up on his sleep.i hope he was well behaved not to have caused to much trouble as for people as 7 year olds just want to go...to the man with the planes they were great lachlan is hounding me still for one but i insist a ethos is better for him in his 100mm table dobbie...
for you people that have never been to a star party when the next is on come and stay its just great
Thanks to everyone for making me feel welcome. It was lovely to put faces to names.
Friday night's all nighter was especially good, imaging the reflections on the dam. I'll work on the animation tonight maybe.
Saturday night though..... I felt a right git for falling over twice in one night. Thank you Mike for the serenade every time I walked by. My poor camera, that was its third fall during camp.
And Al, you are a genius on your guitar. I enjoyed your music very much.
Looking forward to meeting you all next time. Seems I may become a fixture at these southern astro camps.
only took a few happy snaps, too busy doing other stuff hee hee.
first image is from friday night/morning
Chris, Mike and Al (mike is so smart, he plays his games upside down),
my favourite pic is of Fred, in the poo again. honestly....
Mike, Guy
the IISAC fields from the top hill, and Muhamfred
Hi All,
Thanks for a wonderful weekend, got home as tired as I have ever been. Really had fun and was glad I held out for the last night, we ended up with some pretty clear viewing!!!
Great weekend, great company... an all round great event!
just included a couple of happy snaps from the weekend
Iceman, thank you for organising such a great event. I reckon it was the good karma that was there that cleared the skies for us for Saturday night.
I saw the Andromeda Galaxy for the first time and comet Gerrad, ta Mozzie , and Thor's Helmet, ta too Greg . Fire balls galore, and a constant flash glow of a nasty thunderstorm that lay behind the ridge to the west. Quite an active sky.
Clouds did tease us a bit, but I did manage a couple of sketches, 47 Tuc and of Thor's Helmet. I'll just post a pic of these here and do a write up of them in the DSO sketching sticky in the next day or so.
Thank you to the folks who came to my little sketching workshop. It was a buzz for me to be able to share this passion of mine with you. Hopefully I've inspired a few of you to have a go. The technique I showed isn't hard as you saw, but man, it is sooo effective! If you have any questions, would like a few pointers, or what ever, I'm only too happy to help out. Just let me know.
Mental.
Last edited by mental4astro; 31-10-2011 at 12:28 PM.
Reason: typo
Just a quick one - the IISAC2011 Feedback Form is now online.
There's only 10 questions and will only take a few minutes to fill out.
All questions are optional and your responses will not be shared with anyone. The responses are simply to help me improve on IISAC and provide the best event and the best experience for attendees.
Firstly, let me say thank you to Mike and all involved in making these events what they are. Even though the numbers were sadly lacking this year, those that did go had a wonderful time catching up with friends we don't see too often.
It was great to welcome new faces to the event too - and in particular (for me) it was fabulous to finally meet Jeanette (jjjnettie) for the first time. She's hopefully going to attend a few more IISACs in the future.
I had the privilege of hooking my camera on to Fred Vanderhaven's home-designed time-lapse controller to ride along with his own 5D Mark-II for a couple of evenings. Fred ran the fantastic Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens, and I ran my own EF 17-40mm f/4L USM. In comparison, he achieved high-quality smooth images in the 10 seconds we allocated to each frame during the shoot. My results were less than stellar given that we wanted to cater to the F/1.4 and not my slow F/4. That's OK - my next lens is now decided, and I'll look forward to running it again with Fred on level terms if I'm ever given the chance. LOL
Anyway - here is a brief pre-process version of some of the footage we shot from my camera.
The soundtrack is from a recording I made with my iPhone 4 of Al Sheehan (sheeny) playing his wonderful guitar as we listened to the frogs in the dam as some of us shot more reflective skycapes off the mirror-smooth surface of our newly-named Lake IISAC. Hats off to ya Al - you made the evening!
I hit the sack at about 12:30-ish knowing I'd have to drive today, but I would've liked to stay up longer. The frogs in the dam reminded me of home - except there weren't any Pocklebonks (Pobblebonks is the other dialect
).
).
