Who in Melbourne wants to chance it this weekend

[traveller]

A serious question. I have been setting up and dismantling the set up 3-4 times in the last couple of months, without any decent breaks in the cloud and rain for more than 30 mins at most.
No moon this weekend, but dodgy weather again.
Who is game enough to set up this weekend?
Bo

[Sarge]

Looks very dodgey for Fri and Sat nights, but the Sun and Mon early forecast is promising (fingers, toes and eyes crossed :rofl:).

But how many times has it "looked promising" only to disapoint, well is it Melbourne!! :P

Clear skies (wishing)

Rod
:D:D

[The_bluester]

I have not had a chance to set up in months, between our bushfire rebuild work and normal work I just have not had time, hopefully something good for this weekend!

[pfitzgerald]

I haven't had the opportunity weather wise to set up the scope since April. :-(

Paul

[MattT]

Nope not a chance. Glad to say I'm working :lol: Might try for late September.
Matt

[pgc hunter]

Looking at the forecast, the only thing I am game enough to set up this weekend is my slab of beer and my Family Guy DVDs.

I'll brush the scope off come December or some crap. Even then, seeing will probably be a donkey's bum but whatever, Melbourne is the DERP capital of the observable universe.

Stop stressing Traveller, Melbourne is an astronomical blac hole to end all black holes. If you want to observe, go to anywhere else in Australia and if you run into people from Bribane, Perfffffffff and Sydney crying about the weather.... smash 'em they don't know squat they never lived in Melbourne so they don't know what pain is

me,bourne = permanent nuclear winter = derp capital of tjhe universe = you wamt to be as far away as possible if you love astronomy, and not in the direction of tasmania, the subarctic overcast freezer hyper overcast exclave of melbourne. Melbourne is also the capital city of the antarctic Australain Antarctic terriroty. That should be dead givaway that Melbourne is one of the worse cities on earth for anything to do with astronomy.

[Eden]

I concur...I went up to Kinglake yesterday and left the telescope at home after seeing the "total and utter clouding of the greater Melbourne area" forecast and I'll be damned, I went for a walk when it got dark and it was completely clear. Best views of the night sky I've had yet, minus telescope...:mad2:

[rustigsmed]

absolutely no chance this weekend. 50% cloud cover predicted the whole weekend. am considering moving to the country.

[N1]

Consider a grab and go setup. Of a 30-minute break in the weather, 29 could be spent observing. Ok, 28 - cause you need to take the caps off too and select eyepiece. ;)

[traveller]

I think Sab had the right idea and cook up a storm and enjoy the inner glow from the seared marinated meat...
I have a 70mm AZ mounted refractor which I use for moon observations (the last I used was the occultation of saturn).
Oh well...

[scagman]

Hi Eden,

You must have been very lucky. I live in kinglake west and for the last 3-4 nights I would get home and its nice and clear. By the time I get the fire going and do a few things its cloudy again. Tuesday night I went out to take the bins out at 7.30pm and it was clear, by the time I drove the bins to the end of the drive and got back I couldn't see 50' due to fog. Last night looked good. I got my shoes and coat on went outside and it was starting to rain.:mad2:
The worst part is, if I happen to wake up early in the morning and look out the window its been clear, not a cloud in sight.

[rustigsmed]

tonight may be clearish but the wind will be blowing a bit... still probably the first night in a while.

[Shiraz]

been horrible over this way as well - regardless of what happens elsewhere, there seems to have been almost permanent cloud cover over the coastal south east of the continent this winter. Makes the hobby a bit less enjoyable because one feels obliged to use every clear hour regardless of inconvenience or sleep deprivation - who knows when the next opportunity might be.

[pgc hunter]

Going to be very windy in Melbourne this week, so no chance really. Was *sort of* clear last night, but wind. Tonight looks like it might be clear, but wind will kill it. Meh I got work anyway.

[pfitzgerald]

Well I've set the scope up. According to my Synscan controller the last time I had it out was 27 April - so it's three months since I've been able to get the scope out.

My nice marks on the pavers for the tripod have washed away so polar alignment might take a little while tonight. I think I can still remember how everything goes, so now all I need is for the Sun to set and the wind to drop a little bit more.

This will be my first real go using the Atik CLS clip in light pollution filter. Any tips from those who have one? I'm hoping to be able to take 300 sec subs at ISO 800 on my Canon 60Da. My target of choice for tonight is Gum 85 (Sh2-54) near NGC 6604. Last winter I was only able to run 25 second subs on this nebula as I didn't have a guidescope then. So hopefully tonight I'll end up with a significantly better image.

Paul

[GrampianStars]

I've been away for a while &
just saw the Space Station cross a clear twilight sky :thumbsup:
Time to roll back the roof
I spent the w.e. preparing for the next clear night
So..... I'm going for it

[pfitzgerald]

How's the wind over there Rob? It's picked up here in Melbourne and coming from ~NW.

Polar alignment was ok - not as accurate on other occassions but enough that PHD should be able to do its stuff. Just finishing off dinner for the GLW and the kids and then I should be OK to image.

Looking out the kitchen window just now the neighbours have left their outdoor spotlights on. :-(

Paul

[GrampianStars]

NNW mild gusts to 5knots Perfect for keeping flying bugs away
I;ll keep the walls up just in case it picks up
Mmm... plesant 9c down to 5c later
Just when Andromeda says hello around 4:00 am

Neighbour's lights ? what's that only rural dogs barking with Fox's chilling screams when killing the Neighbour's chickens :lol:
They never learn to lock them up @ night

[pfitzgerald]

7:50 pm
Lights are off, guiding is working, I think I've framed my shots ok, 5 minute subs are underway and I'm now eating some dinner before checking on them.

9:50 pm
Unbelievable - after the forecast being for clear skies (<10% cloud) all day it's now clouded over, with more cloud on the way!!!
I managed to get about 14 x 5 minute subs done before having to pack up all the gear (twas looking forward to a late night). So now the camera is taking darks and I'll do some flats tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll get something useful. Talk about frustrating. *Sigh*

Paul

[04Stefan07]

I would love to take a chance whenever I can!

I did last night but could not do a damn polar alignment.

[rustigsmed]

getting itchy feet with my EQ8 (had it for so long and had never got it going properly) i set up, polar aligned - kind of, and even managed to get the OAG and lodestar going. first time ever. blustery conditions though so i have no idea how far off the polar alignment as the wind would gust every 30 secs or so. but i felt like i have made that incy bit more progress to 'real' astrophotography ... :question: which is great after a year of no progress.

[MattT]

An EQ8 so I'm blaming you Russell :lol: On a whim I took out the 100ED on the EQ3 took all of 30 secs to get it out the shed and tried the ES 18 82º eyepiece I bought from the classes recently. Nice eyepiece, thanks Ben :thumbsup: Same TFOV as the ES 24 68º but sharp as….to the edge, unlike the 24mm which suffers a bit of FC at f9….at f12 that nearly disappears…almost.
The seeing was bad and transparency not up to much either but checked out a few open clusters M7 etc. 30 mins was all I could stand and put it away at 8:30….took the dog out at 10pm to find the usual clouds had taken over.
Matt

[pfitzgerald]

Well I got the darks done overnight after I'd packed up the rest of the gear. Just arrived home from work but it is too dark now to do the flat field frames, they'll have to wait until later in the week.

After checking through my subs I've got twelve that look like they will be useful, so 60 minutes altogether. Interestingly there is an asteroid (?) trail through two of them. From the changes in its intensity and the fact that it didn't make a 'perfect' straight line across the subs, but a slightly wiggly one, it looks like it might have been tumbling/rotating (?) I'm assuming that it was moving too slow for a satellite. It went right through the middle of Gum 85 and took 5-6 minutes to completely cross the FOV (~1.5o). Anyone have any ideas what it might have been? I'll try and post an image once I've had the chane to process them.

Paul

[byronpaul]

I had opportunity to get the SDM out on Sunday in prep for Peter Read coming to give her a once over. After spending well over 2 hours with Peter, decided to leave the scope out for the night in the hope of some clear skies.

Whilst it wasn't terrible seeing, nor brilliant either, I think there were pockets of pretty good skies. From about 10pm I did the usuals targets in Omega Centauri, 47Tuc, Trifid, Lagoon, and so on. Spent a bit of time on Trifid and Lagoon with OIII and DGM NPB filters and the seeing was good.

Chancing my hand about midnight, thought I'd point the scope to Grus Quartet just to check my scope position vs sky view limit (trees) at about 30deg. Oh well might as well look in the eyepiece whilst I'm here but didn't expect to see NGC7552 at Mag 10.6 ..... what that can't be. Low and behold it was. :eyepop:

After a few minutes I swung down to the other members of the Quartet and to my surprise I could easily pick up NGC7590 @ Mag 11.5 and NGC7582 @ Mag 10.6 but try as I might I could detect NGC7599 @ Mag 11.5

Now I have never seen Grus Quartet from my home position near Melb Airport so I was very happy. :D

Played around a bit more and packed up about 1:30am after a very successful evening despite average seeing.

Paul

[pfitzgerald]

Well done Paul.
It sounds like there we're breaks in the cloud after all. However with my location in Mill Park (down near Plenty Gorge) I couldn't see the breaks in the clouds so packed up. After work this arvo I'll take my flat frames and then process what I captured.
Paul

[traveller]

Good to hear the clouds are lifting (finally). This weekend is dodgy, but may as well set up and chance it again.
Bo