Reinvigoration

[Lee]

This weekend we camped out at Caffreys Flat (actually only 10km or so from Bretti). I packed in the ED80 and a few finder charts printed by Starry Night, with the objective of showing the kids the planets and moon, and then NGC253 a bit later on.
Struggling with the telrad I was eventually happy I was on Diphda, and started star hopping (gee I'm rusty!) - before long that spooky smudge appeared.... I remember the view of Sculpture with my 8" dob under dark skies from years back, and the ED80 was way behind, but it was still obvious and even impressed my 8 year old son.
Maybe the answer to my imaging stresses is to just take a step back and start star hopping again? I just need a dose of aperture fever I think!

[Davekyn]

Glad you had a good time Lee.

I used to own a 12 inch dob and really enjoyed my time star hopping with it. At the moment I am toying with the idea of getting back into things with an 8 inch dob.

Sounds like your son had a good time as well. All the best with your next outing.

[glend]

Lee keep an eye on the Star Party sub forum, I think some of the guys are planning a trip up to Bretti next month. Your son, and yourself, would get to look through a variety of bigger aperture scopes with all sort of pointing systems. You can cover a lot of sky with a digitial system and big apeture.

[Lee]

I'll keep an eye out, thanks - we drove home via Gloucester and were going to check out Bretti on the way, but we were all getting tired and it would have required a pretty long diversion....