Finally, clear skies AND decent seeing!

[iceman]

It's been about 6 weeks since I've had both of these in one night..

Sky is crystal clear, seeing is OVER 5/10 (first time in a long time) and my fingers are freezing out here, but at least I'm imaging.

It's been a long wait! I might finally have something (an image) worth posting - first time in ages!

Ganymede's shadow is 3/4 through its transit - get out there and take a look! GRS is beginning its transit now too.

[matt]

:( I won't be imaging for a while, Mike.

But I look forward to seeing your images from tonight.

Hope others are out there too.

[gbeal]

I am, but not Jupe. Trying some RGB of M17, and also Barnards. Cold too though. Shame the moon is about.

[matt]

Bring it on!!!!:)

[gbeal]

A local monthly competetion Matt.

[davidpretorius]

cloud!

great to see you back in the saddle mike!

[erick]

Yep! I was out having a look. Saw that. Couldn't be too late - work and all that Monday.

Finally got some high mist or something by 8:30 - had a gorgeous 40 deg wide halo around the Moon I hadn't seen before.

And a nice balmy 7 deg while I was out and no dew. Heaven compared to Snake Valley 4am Saturday morning while I waited for M31 to rise high enough. I checked later and it was -2 deg by that stage. Gave up when the counterweight magnet kept freezing to the OTA :cold:

[iceman]

I had a wonderful time with Joop, kept going till it was overhead then went inside. Once it goes past zenith, a) it would take too long to do the meridian flip, and b) I lose it behind some large trees shortly after.

But the seeing improved, it appeared to be at least 8/10. Was great to see the fine detail on Jupiter and in the GRS, and on ganymede, while capturing the raw data.

I'm out here now trying for Uranus, but it looks like i'm 30 minutes too late. When I walked outside it was scattered high fog/low cloud, now it's almost blanket.

[bird]

Mike, good to see you getting some decent seeing, it's been hard to come by lately.

The seeing was stunning down this wasy last night, I reckon easily the best this year, and now I have a new idea of what "10/10" must look like :-)

The best stuff lasted only about 15 minutes, enough time for me to grab a few runs. So for the first time in a week or so I'm processing data again :-)

regards, Bird

[iceman]

Great to hear it wasn't isolated to the Central Coast, Anthony.

If you got a few runs at 10/10, I simply cannot wait to see how they turned out. You've already produced some amazing stuff in the last month or so.

We've got clear skies for the rest of the week, let's hope the seeing keeps up.