A few good nights coming up

[Startrek]

Away from all the doom and gloom of Corona, there’s are few good nights coming up in Sydney for Astro
Tonight’s clear , Wednesday nights clear , Thursday nights clear with some random high level cloud and Friday nights clear
Take advantage of it as it’s been months and months since we’ve had consecutive clear nights and no moon around
If your setting up , good luck and enjoy !!!
Cheers

[tango]

Thanks for the reminder Martin!
I'm definitely making time this evening to look above, instead of looking for toilet paper.
Clear Outside app is confirming clear skies :)

[JeniSkunk]

Thanks Martin.
For the suburbs around Brisbane Airport, Friday and Saturday nights are looking very promising in the Clear Outside app.

[h0ughy]

Not fair as I have fog..

[Quopaz]

Tomorrow morning Mars, Jupiter, the moon, and Saturn will all be pretty close together. Got a pic this morning through clouds, but tomorrow might be better with the moon more in the middle.

[ChrisV]

Good luck Martin, I'll also be trying tonight

[PaulSthcoast]

Martin,

The last two nights were amazing down here,
tonight......neh.……

Tomorrow night, maybe ?

Paul.

edit…..

I was wrong...looking good !!

[Startrek]

Chris
Got 2.5hrs on Carina last night and just about to start on Centaurus A tonight
Beautiful night !!
Paul
Sounds great
Wish I was down at Narrawallee and Bortle 3 skies
But I’m in Sydney with Bortle 8 skies and neighbours flood lights streaming into the backyard. The things we do to get an image

Enjoy tonight !!

[ChrisV]

Excellent Martin. I've only just set up and waiting for my camera to cool. Still warm in the suburbs

[Startrek]

Chris,
Enjoy the clear night
Just finished another hour on M42 to add to my image a few nights ago
My DSLR struggles on these abnormally warm nights
Looks like my transition from DSLR to cooled OSC might be delayed until late in the year due to ZWO supply issues at the moment
Good luck !
Martin

[JeniSkunk]

Looking forward to the clear skies here in my area of Brisbane tonight.
Just put the scopes out on the patio to let them cool down a bit in advance.

edit: add pic of the telescopes

[JeniSkunk]

Spent some time last night viewing Spica, using the little 50x500 frac.
Nice and sharp in both the 25mm Kellner and 12.5mm HA eyepieces.
The 'gun sight' finder on it though, is an utter pain to use, in comparison to a red dot finder.

Using my binocs, a small group of stars in Centaurus caught my eye. The upside down tilted T like formation of the following stars.
i Centauri / 1 Centauri / HIP 67153
g Centauri / 2 Centauri / HIP 67457
k Centauri / 3 Centauri / HIP 67669 A
h Centauri / 4 Centauri / HIP 67786

The Southern Cross, the pointers Rigil Kentaurus and Hadar, and δ Centauri and γ Centauri, were all blocked by the trees, when I tried to view them in my Heritage P130. They were all nicely visible in my binocs though, so I spent more time using my binocs viewing them.
The sole target I could reliably line up on in my P130 was Spica.

Unfortunately the mosquitoes cut short what should have been a good, long, evening's viewing.

edit: fix typo

[multiweb]

Had a great night in Sydney last night. Managed a couple of hours and enjoyed getting out imaging again. It has been a while and the mozzies showed me they missed me too.

[JeniSkunk]

What targets did you go after, Marc?

[multiweb]

I was on eta for a couple of hours and the rosette a bit. More of a refresher than serious imaging. Got everything right but polar alignmemt.

[JeniSkunk]

So much for tonight supposedly being a good night.
I arranged things on my patio intending to use the 50x500 on the Southern Cross and the Pointers.
Just went out to start viewing and clouds, clouds, and more clouds. :cloudy:
Sod it! Not happy at all. :sadeyes:

[JeniSkunk]

With ClearOutside saying it should be clear last night, I decided to try to put my RAO 50x500 frac to use looking at the Southern Cross, and the Pointers. Unfortunately, by the time I was outside, most were too high up to manage to line up in the finder.
Thankfully, at least one wasn't. Rigil Kentaurus. The bottom of the Pointers. So things weren't a total washout.
In the 22mm Kellner, I was able to easily observe it, but my eye was twitching too much to clearly observe it in either the 12mm HA or 6mm HA. I'd been hoping to see if I could see the split between α Centauri A (Rigil Kentaurus) and α Centauri B (Toliman), using the 6mm.
At least one good thing from using the scope more, I'm not trying to focus using the eyepiece thumbscrew, a habit I got into on my Heritage P130 tabletop Dob.

[PaulSthcoast]

Pouring here....and it was looking promising.

Paul.

[Startrek]

Paul,
There must be a few odd angry clouds above your house ?? , it’s dry as a bone up here at Narrawallee
Just put the bins out and I can see a few stars in between the low and mid level cloud cover
Attached CFN graph and report too

Martin

[IanT]

Quopaz mentioned it earlier but it’s worth repeating that the early morning sky at the moment is brilliant. Scorpius and Sagittarius are roughly overhead at about 5.30am with Jupiter and Mars very close together, Saturn not far away and Mercury above the eastern horizon. Lots of first magnitude stars in every direction.
Ian

[JeniSkunk]

Lucky Ian. Here in Brisbane, according to ClearOutside, we're expecting heavy cloud cover mornings and nights, to and through the weekend.
:cloudy:
:sadeyes:

[PaulSthcoast]

Well..after a perfect clear sky day.....its pouring....again...

Martin?

Paul

[Startrek]

Paul,
Yes a beautiful day , but unfortunately heavy cloud rolled in from the SE and caught us all by surprise , a descent downpour around tea time
Early Friday night and Saturday night late is looking ok for some observing ( light wind , low Jetstream and cool evenings ) Not a big enough window for imaging at this stage. I usually need a 4 to 5 hour window to align , frame , focus and gather enough data on an object
I might roll my 12” Goto dob out for an hour or two
Carinas is up nice and high
Omega Centauri is rising
Centaurus A is rising
Plus a few other globs and clusters
Plenty up there at the moment
Good luck if your setting up !
Martin

[IanT]

Hi Jeniskunk
It may be raining in Brisbane but I bet it’s easier to get out of bed at 5 am there than in Launceston. What caught my eye was your use of the little RA 50mm table top refractor. I have one too and even though not much light gets through I always get sharp views of double stars, Jupiter and especially Saturn. I love it.
Ian

[JeniSkunk]

I don't have the physical space for a full size tripod, on the patio/balcony of my flat, so I use tabletop gear as that gives me more space behind the scopes.
I got my RAO 50x500 tabletop frac from Doolsduck, when he put it up for sale back in September last year. It's a brilliant little scope.
I haven't had a chance to see Jupiter and Saturn, yet, this year in any of my scopes.
Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, look like being in their best spot for viewing, at about 2:30am, April 7. Bleah. Ugly hour to have to be awake for.

[Startrek]

Great nights observing on the south coast NSW last night ( best this year so far ) seeing was really good , nice and stable , low Jetstream
Rolled out the 12” Goto dob from the garage and levelled up at 6.00pm, 2 star alignment took 5 minutes and up and running by 8.00pm. Finished up around 11pm
Used a variety of my Televue eye pieces with a Paracorr type 2 coma corrector on a number of objects including the following -
NGC 5139 Omega Centauri globular cluster
M42 Orion Nebula ( could just resolve trap E and F )
NGC 3372 Carina Nebula
IC 2602 Southern Pleiades cluster
NGC 2808 globular cluster
NGC 4590 globular cluster
NGC 3532 Wishing well cluster
NGC 4755 Jewel Box
NGC 5128 Centaurus A Galaxy

Used the following eye pieces
Ethos 21mm ( the hand grenade )
Ethos 13mm
Delos 17.3mm
Panoptic 24mm
Panoptic 27mm
Astronomik UHC filters

Great night !!

Forecast looks ordinary for the next week , some rain around and cloudy nights

Waiting in anticipation to get a couple of clear nights for some imaging under Bortle 3 skies