Could be good tonight.

[matt]

Fingers crossed that the forecast is accurate for this part of the world.

Conditions are clear and steady and the jetstream map looks great for late tonight/ early tomorrow morning for Canberra.

Hopefully you'll have nice conditions where you are too.

Scope is out... now waiting for a good night for imaging.

Hoping to get a nice late Autumn Jove:thumbsup:

[bizarro]

Looking good here in Sydney too. Shame I have to go out tonight (as in somewhere other than the backyard). Celebrating a friends birthday so will have to see what shape I'm in when we get home. :drink:

Will definitely need the IIS beanie if I venture out late this evening. :cold:

Clear skies everyone.

Cheers,
Greg

[sheeny]

I'm keen! 2 nights in a row! Woohoo!:2thumbs:

The only problem for me is there's been a large fire south of town today, so there's a heavy plume of smoke across the horizon from South to East (probably across the Blue Mountains somewhere). Hopefully it will stay there and not blow back over me...:whistle:

Al.

[matt]

Just checked AstroCalc.

GRS should be transiting the meridian around 10.15pm and from about 11.10pm we have Europa and shadow as well as GRS approaching the limb.

Jupiter at 54 degrees altitude and 64 degrees respectively, so quite nice for imaging.

[erick]

I got everything out in the backyard - I might have a nice moon-lit, sky-glow night. After a couple of weeks of cloud and rain - ANYTHING will do!

[Kal]

My scope is outside cooling down now. I hope to get some decent lunar and Jovian shots before the night is done!

[matt]

Interested to see some Jove shots from your LX200R, Kal.

I'm quite curious about this model/brand of scope as a planetary imager.

[mill]

Just had a look outside and it is not looking that wel :(

[matt]

You down south?

Might be a bit of jetstream for you.

[mill]

Victoria and the moon has a haze around it :(
Looks like some thin cloud.

[matt]

Stay out there.

Could very well improve.

Is still worth observing/imaging Jove, if it's only very thin cloud;)

[Kal]

This is one of my captures of the night (@F25). It is 'as is' captured/stacked/processed by the LPI software. All I did was convert it from a TIFF to a JPEG.

Edit: Added an image of the straight wall as well - this one I touched up in photoshop a bit (contrast/sharpen)

[ballaratdragons]

The sky is getting clearer and clearer here as the night goes on :thumbsup:

Gone from 8/10 Transparency earlier to a 9.5/10 now. I can just make out Vesta naked eye, so it must be good.

There's hope for you yet Mill.

[matt]

My first Jove for the night. Captured about half an hour ago:thumbsup:

[erick]

Hazy cloud for much of the night, but didn't stop me working around the favourites - limited by moonlight and melbourne's skyglow. Seeing seemed to be up and down, never great. Spent most time on the Moon - first real opportunity with my scope. Well, I cannot see the craterlets in Plato at first attempt - my maximum magnification is 266 - unless I hold the 9mm eyepiece steady out of the barlow and keep cranking the focuser in as I move it further from the OTA! Don't think it was designed for that procedure, but it was fun trying.

Seemed to aggravate my sore throat and runny nose which developed this morning (couple of days after the rest of the family). Lemsip and off to bed. Big day tomorrow - my dob base is going to join forces with Ebonystar!

[spearo]

nice shot Spiderdude!
having a go at M20 at F/10 tonight...still trying to push that poor old CG5 to it's limit!
frank

[iceman]

Beautiful, Matt! I wasn't out there. I'll try tonight.

[Rodstar]

Conditions were a bit variable from Point Clare last night. It wasn't still enought to hold 360x, so at 10.30pm, by which time it was registering 4.9 degrees, I headed indoors!

[sheeny]

Well after all that I didn't make it!

I knew I had to do the soccer training shuffle in the arvo so that would delay the setting up of the scope, that's OK. But after that I find out I'm cooking a BBQ... OK it just puts the observing back a bit more, it's Friday night, I can stay up late...

Then a mate calls and wants to borrow some camping stuff for the weekend. No probs... he turns up with food and booze. So I explain I'm on call so I have to be able to drive...

So I'm going 1 to 1 1/2 hours between drinks, but he's compensating for me:drink: and well and truly settled in, so once the girls went to bed, I thought it wise to throw a DVD on and provide some entertainment before he got really untidy...

Oh well, there'll be other nights... it was a pleasant enough evening anyway!

Some great photos above guys! Well done (someone's got to do it!);):P:whistle:

Al.

[Ric]

Great images all :thumbsup: , never made it out last night but I stuck my head out a few times and the sky looked pretty perfect as well as depressing because I wasn't out there :sadeyes: . It's the same again today and I cleared all outstanding jobs so nothing will stop me tonight:astron: :camera: we are expecting a overnight drop down to 2ºc so that will help the viewing as well :cold: .

Cheers all, hope you all have a great night.

[h0ughy]

wiimp what about your freezer suit??;) :lol:

[[1ponders]]

Nice shot Matt. Great detail. Glad you made the most of it. :thumbsup:

[iceman]

Looks good so far tonight. Got some lunar avi's with the DMK and Astrovid.

[matt]

Yep. My scope's out again.

How's that new camera performing?

[iceman]

Seems ok, some things to workaround but the large format is great for lunar.

It will also come in handy for Jupiter with a very long focal length :)
I've got an extension tube in the 5x powermate, and Jupiter is too big for the 640x480 capture of the DMK! It would be perfect for the astrovid, going to try it now. The seeing may not be quite up to it but it's not bad.

btw ignore the actual quality of Jupiter in this one :)

[iceman]

Conditions are great tonight! At least 7.5/10 by the looks of the raw data while capturing. I wish there was a GRS or moon transit.

Red Jr has risen and will transit across the CM in an hour or so.

[matt]

Mike

Conditions here are also very good.

I think I've got some quite nice data.

I hope so. I captured about 30 AVIs:scared:;)

[iceman]

I've only got a dozen or so avi's at the moment, but they're very good.

Attached is a sample of recent green channel, processed in registax only. 400 frames stacked.

Time to go to bed soon, I want to get up for Mars in the morning.. but the seeing is too good to go to bed!

[ballaratdragons]

:eyepop: That does look good so far!

I hope the seeing stays so you can give the new camera a real workout.

[h0ughy]

well best of luck to those who got viewing in - we are fog bound, and even at zenith, I can just make out the moon and jupiter. its thick!

[Rodstar]

I was camping with my three kids in the Yengo National Park last night. I have never seen the moon look so clear, naked eye. No scope to observe with, but the sky looked terrific.