Last night's viewing with NAS

[venus]

I arrived at the NAS viewing site Cook Park Shortland after viewing had well and truly begun, and with excellent viewing conditions. I felt almost like "Alice in wonderland" except the mirror was a reflector in a telescope! I was transported to much more interesting worlds in deep space with views of Sombrero Galaxy M104 , that looks like a version of Saturn but is really a tightly wound big- hubbed, dust-belted spiral galaxy about 40 million light years away.
Viewing was made all the more interesting as I traveresed my way to Ron's 12" Dob and viewed sights like the "Jewelbox" then on to viewing the "Jewelbox" again ,an open cluster about 7500 light-years with a central red giant which could be closely viewed through Eddie's huge 18". I noticed two faint shooting stars on the night and left just as the waning moon was breaking through the streaky horizon.

[h0ughy]

lydia

was it a wee bit chilly on the slopes of mount shortland on saturday night:P at 8.30 it weas 6.3 degrees:cold:

who else turned up?

[Rodstar]

Viewing conditions were also great on the Central Coast last night, even from my backyard. Not a sign of dew to be seen, but as you observe HOughy, bloody freezing.

Sounds like it was a great night for everyone.

[Orion]

It turned out to be a very successful night but earlier on I was having some encoder problems actually I think it was just a lose wire on the alt encoder I fixed the problem, after that it was clear sailing.
A few of us turned up and I was happy see a person that Mike and I were talking to the previous night at the meeting. He was having certain problems regarding his telescope. I spent some time teaching him how to line up his finder scope besides other things. George also brought his 18" and there were plenty of telescopes to look through.