WOAH What a night!!!

[rowena]

Just had an AWESOME nights viewing!!! The highlights would be seeing the sombreo (sp?) galaxy, omega centauri, m45 and m46, eta carina, and nebula in orion! :cool:

was starting to get a bit chilly towards the end... and the moon was coming up.. but the dew! well... i swear we coulda broke the drought tonight!!!!

I definately want a LX200 now!!!

*bounce*bounce*bounce*
rowena

[RAJAH235]

Told ya ta wear something warm. Thermos of coffee/tea, chocy bics/devil's food cake, chair, etc etc. See you at 6.30ish. :D L.

[rowena]

the warm part i had covered! :)
as for sitting.. didn't do any of that... Joe (i think it was joe) kept me busy moving from scope and to different objects! got a chance to do some piccies.. but will have to put them up this afternoon when i get home from work. i forgot my cable release.. so i will do some star trails tonight. I also want to push my camera to do a 5-10 minute exposure.. being digital and all. the sky was nice and dark.. compared to wollongong. could easily make out the Large Magellic Cloud!.. actually did a 30 sec exposure on that part of the sky and you can see its little smudge in the photo ;)

the one thing i am noticing though is how dehydrating it is to be outside. I have even noticed it at home, that I do end up going through a lot of water when i venture back in from being outside.

rowena

[toetoe]

It was good last night for looking around. Have to leave the cake, choc bics and the like inside or one would be to busy eating and not viewing. :)

[Striker]

Good to see you all had a good time.....

Was this the first time you met up.

How many of you were their......many from this forum...any pics you can post of the members or scopes you were using...

[rowena]

ummm i meet up with WAAC (Wollongong Amature Astronomy Club). Laurie wasn't there last night, but will catch up with him tonight, and toetoe was at his home in albury from what i gather in his message...

as for piccies.. I got some quick shots of the sky.. so here goes.

[rowena]

these were the best two that i took last night. Forgot my cable release so could only do 30 second exposures. both were on iso 1600, 30 seconds, with a f5.6 appeature and lens at 18mm with a canon 300D. no proccesing has occured, except to resize them for here :)

[Mick]

Two top targets, lovely photos Rowena. :)

[rowena]

thankyou :)

hehehe... i got even BETTER tonight!!.. i will post them a bit later on. i just want to do some playing with them first.... but lets just say i got to hook my 300D up to a 12" LX200 tonight!.. (without wedge tho)..

[iceman]

Beautiful shots Rowena, would LOVE to see some with a longer exposure..

Here's the milky way one with a curves adjustment.. Can even see the coalsack, omega centauri, just beautiful.

[rowena]

hrm. i don't know if its my laptop or not or if it is just the size of the photo, but it seems a little pixelated. I'll have a go at playing with it as well... i can see the diff in photos. amazing how much detail a camera can pick up that we cant see.

I really need to learn how to play with imaging, which i know is a weak point of mine. Think I'll have to search work(aka the library) on help books with imaging!

found some good books too... will have to get a chance to have a quick read and will do a report on them.

rowena

[iceman]

It could be the noise is amplified a bit, maybe a run through NeatImage would clean it up a bit.. but also I simply enhanced your already reduced and compressed version. If you worked off the original i'm sure it would look great.