Gargoyle_Steve
10-12-2007, 12:24 PM
We went, we saw, we saw some more! Great weekend, great companionship! :thumbsup:
Joy and I headed up Friday and we were joined by AstroRon early afternoon, we had plenty of setting up to do :doh:but managed to find some time to sit back for a chat and some drinks & nibblies, with Ron doing a spot of bird watching at the same time (the trees near the frog pond hosting a number of small colourful birds).
After all the prep work at home in the last week or so, and all the vehicle loading / unloading, driving, etc, it was good just to sit and rest for a bit.
Ron and I went and set up our scopes late in the afternoon, checked out the treeline and got our North/South bearings, etc, then walked back over to think about dinner. Along the way we set up a series of guide lights for anyone walking over and back through the tress, or driving onto the field, to make it easier to find your way under the very dark conditions.
:thumbsup:
This system proved to work very well indeed and comprised red glow sticks, a number of small but bright red LED flashers to guide you from one point to another (Joy's idea, worked VERY well), and Ron's faithful solar garden lights to help cars steer clear of any scopes.
:driving:
It's a shame that no one else was able to come up on the Friday night, but Mark (the Camp Principal) came over from his residence just up the road for a chat and a quick drink with us after dark.
Sadly he wasn't able to observe with us due to early morning Cricket commitments the following day. As it turn out he would have been MUCH better off staying up late with us and giving the cricket a miss, but more on that later.
As a result of this chat session we didn't end up going over to do any observing until around 9:30pm or so. :whistle: We had missed seeing the Hubble passover, and the Andromeda Galaxy and Comet Holmes had disappeared back into the NW treeline by this time, but the sky was cloudless and there was still plenty to look at!
Seeing was down a bit - there was some high moisture in the air - but we had a pretty good observing session anyway, and with plenty of meteors running all through the night. We could also see lightning flashes echoing from somewhere far to the south nearly all night, but couldn't see the clouds they were coming from). Joy toddled off to bed around 11 or so, Ron and I stuck at it for a while longer.
When it started clouding up somewhere towards 12:30 we decided to call it a night, Ron and I wrapping reflective silver covers over our scopes and packing ep cases, etc, back into our cars (which we were leaving parked there in the obs field for the night). Of course by the time we messed around having a quick chat and a cuppa back in the dining hall the sky had cleared again!
I fell asleep around 2-ish planning a bit of a recovery sleep in the next morning, knowing that no one else was likely to arrive before 10 or 11 the next morning anyway. :zzz:
I was therefore unpleasantly surprised to be woken sharply at 6:30 am by the sound of hammering rain! :scared2: I debated getting up for a few minutes, and eventually decided I had better go check our gear. I'd left both my Driza-bones in the car of course :doh: but Joy had one of those emergency plastic poncho things in her bag so donning that I ventured out (looking like a Daydream Island tourist according tote blurb on the front of it.
Apparently Ron had woken and had the same thoughts re drowning scopes as I did, as we met each other approaching the dining hall from opposite directions. The rain had already lightened up a bit as we started over, a walking distance of about 150 metres.
:cloudy:
The scopes were fine, the ground was solid (it had been a fairly quick downpour anyway) and since we were up it was obviously breakfast time!
There was a couple more light showers over the next hour or two but the day cleared reasonably well with only patchy cloud remaining, and this downpour was the only rain that fell all weekend long at Barambah in contrast to what several weather reports were predicting for the coastal areas.
Afterward breakfast we finished the last bits of setting up (more red lights - always more red lights!) including stringing up the 2nd of the 10 metre Christmas "red only" snake lights I bought just last week. These things are FANTASTIC for Astro camps :thumbsup: and it's a great time of year to be buying them! They throw a good red light, you can string them out between buildings, along walkways, etc, and the best thing was I managed to pick up 2 x 10 metre sets for only $10 each!!
The rest of Saturday was more "restful" with the remainder of our observing crew arriving - a smaller group than we had hoped for all up, with several people who had planned to come not making it, but those of us who made the effort all had a great weekend!
Dennis (Nightshift) also came out for the run on his relatively new Aquila motor bike for a day visit as promised. As Ron astutely pointed out even the bike had an Astronomical theme! :lol:
Joy went for a nap mid afternoon, I think Ron did the same thing not long afterwards, and Dennis headed off home again so Jeanette, Mike Chris and I decided to settle in and watch a movie on the big projection screen while waiting for other arrivals - the chosen movie being the 1950 classic "Destination: Moon" (a Robert Heinlein story).
:anaut:
Mike and Chris had settled for the standard chairs but Jeanette and I both fetched our respective personal comfy chairs. Mine apparently proved a little too comfy as somewhere in the middle of the movie my sudden snoring interrupted the feature. :zzz2: I therefore went back to my room and joined Joy by having a quick hour or so nap as well.
By sunset everyone had arrived, rooms were allocated, and dinner was cooking! Rowena was the last to arrive, and as none of us had met her yet face to face it was great to see her make it after all! ;)
During dinner time Mark came over to the camp briefly - as mentioned he had been playing cricket during the day - well now he had one ankle very tightly bound and was hobbling badly. It turns out he went to make a quick run during the match and as he described it later "went down like I was hit by an axe" when he took off and snapped his Achilles tendon!
:sadeyes:
Poor bugger, hope you heal quick Mark, I hope the fact that the school year is pretty much ended will take some of the workload off you and your ankle!
After dinner the rest of us all ventured over to the field around 7:30 to find a reasonably clear sky, quiet sufficient for us to enjoy a mag 1.6 Hubble flyover!
During the course of the evening however the sky was patchy, very patchy. Various sized bits of cloud rolled in and out for ages, sometimes the sky was totally covered, other times mostly clear but the seeing was pretty off again due mainly to moisture.
No one was going to give up too easily so we sat and talked and joked and it was just like being with a bunch of old friends sitting around the camp fire chatting (a metaphorically camp fire that is!).
Some where near midnight a cuppa break was called and in everyone wandered up to the hall to grab a quick drink, or to stay and chat a while there. This time only us 4 guys (Ron, Mike, Chris, and myself) returning to the field, the ladies all calling it quits for the night.
"You snooze, you lose" :P
After 1 am or so the sky started clearing, a lot, then suddenly by 2am it was clear, I mean Clear - seeing 9 out of 10 or better, no clouds, and Dark - THIS was the kind of sky that Barambah had promised us and now finally delivered!
:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Ron was observing Mars with a 9mm ep on top of a 2x barlow - in his 16" dob (1828.8mm fl) thats 406x - we were seeing clear steady views of surface detail in his scope. I could see the same detail in my 12" dob but not quite as large, settling for using my 8mm for 187x.
:astron:
Saturn rose from the trees and looked fabulous, displaying 4 moons clearly (the 5th may have been eclipsed / transitting at the time as the seeing should have easily allowed us to find it easily, I can often pick it up from my yard at home.
The entire area around the Orion nebula was stunning, I could see the Flame nebula easily, I split Alnitak for the first time with no problems. ;)The Horsehead eluded me as I expected it might, although Ron said he could just pick up the surrounding nebulosity in his scope.
The Carina Nebula was fantastic as expected, and the Homonculous was as clear as any view of it I have ever seen, in fact so much clearer than I have ever seen it that I could barely believe it.
:eyepop:
The entire northern band of the Summer Milky Way simply glowed, The LMC and SMC stood out like - well, you know what ;).
I took the opportunity to try the Saxon binoviewer I was given over a year ago for the first time, equipped with 2 x 17mm Hyperion ep's. I need more counterweight on the base end of my OTA I can tell you, but apart from that it was pretty good! I have some fine tuning to do but I was worried that it wouldn't have sufficient in-focus to work, I've read this comment time and again in relation to dobs and binoviewers. All I can say is that this combination in my scope worked a treat and I had in-focus to spare.
The downside of a summer camp is that we began to see daylight creeping into the eastern sky prior to 4am (I guess it is only 2 weeks until the Solstice after all) so we packed it in and headed for bed, well satisfied by the fantastic viewing.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday was a day of clearing, cleaning and packing and I'm pleased to say that everyone chipped in and helped, thanks very much to all of you!! That took a great load of Joy and myself, although it was still 2:30 pm before we finally left Barambah, satisfied that we left the camp was as spotless as when we had arrived, and that we'd therefore be welcome to return to use this facility again.
I want to thank everyone who came along and helped make this first Dark Sky Camp such a friendly and sociable event.
:thanks:
For those who wanted to come along but couldn't make it I hope you can join us next time, I personally can't wait until the next camp in when we will have longer nights and even better skies!
:thumbsup:
Joy and I headed up Friday and we were joined by AstroRon early afternoon, we had plenty of setting up to do :doh:but managed to find some time to sit back for a chat and some drinks & nibblies, with Ron doing a spot of bird watching at the same time (the trees near the frog pond hosting a number of small colourful birds).
After all the prep work at home in the last week or so, and all the vehicle loading / unloading, driving, etc, it was good just to sit and rest for a bit.
Ron and I went and set up our scopes late in the afternoon, checked out the treeline and got our North/South bearings, etc, then walked back over to think about dinner. Along the way we set up a series of guide lights for anyone walking over and back through the tress, or driving onto the field, to make it easier to find your way under the very dark conditions.
:thumbsup:
This system proved to work very well indeed and comprised red glow sticks, a number of small but bright red LED flashers to guide you from one point to another (Joy's idea, worked VERY well), and Ron's faithful solar garden lights to help cars steer clear of any scopes.
:driving:
It's a shame that no one else was able to come up on the Friday night, but Mark (the Camp Principal) came over from his residence just up the road for a chat and a quick drink with us after dark.
Sadly he wasn't able to observe with us due to early morning Cricket commitments the following day. As it turn out he would have been MUCH better off staying up late with us and giving the cricket a miss, but more on that later.
As a result of this chat session we didn't end up going over to do any observing until around 9:30pm or so. :whistle: We had missed seeing the Hubble passover, and the Andromeda Galaxy and Comet Holmes had disappeared back into the NW treeline by this time, but the sky was cloudless and there was still plenty to look at!
Seeing was down a bit - there was some high moisture in the air - but we had a pretty good observing session anyway, and with plenty of meteors running all through the night. We could also see lightning flashes echoing from somewhere far to the south nearly all night, but couldn't see the clouds they were coming from). Joy toddled off to bed around 11 or so, Ron and I stuck at it for a while longer.
When it started clouding up somewhere towards 12:30 we decided to call it a night, Ron and I wrapping reflective silver covers over our scopes and packing ep cases, etc, back into our cars (which we were leaving parked there in the obs field for the night). Of course by the time we messed around having a quick chat and a cuppa back in the dining hall the sky had cleared again!
I fell asleep around 2-ish planning a bit of a recovery sleep in the next morning, knowing that no one else was likely to arrive before 10 or 11 the next morning anyway. :zzz:
I was therefore unpleasantly surprised to be woken sharply at 6:30 am by the sound of hammering rain! :scared2: I debated getting up for a few minutes, and eventually decided I had better go check our gear. I'd left both my Driza-bones in the car of course :doh: but Joy had one of those emergency plastic poncho things in her bag so donning that I ventured out (looking like a Daydream Island tourist according tote blurb on the front of it.
Apparently Ron had woken and had the same thoughts re drowning scopes as I did, as we met each other approaching the dining hall from opposite directions. The rain had already lightened up a bit as we started over, a walking distance of about 150 metres.
:cloudy:
The scopes were fine, the ground was solid (it had been a fairly quick downpour anyway) and since we were up it was obviously breakfast time!
There was a couple more light showers over the next hour or two but the day cleared reasonably well with only patchy cloud remaining, and this downpour was the only rain that fell all weekend long at Barambah in contrast to what several weather reports were predicting for the coastal areas.
Afterward breakfast we finished the last bits of setting up (more red lights - always more red lights!) including stringing up the 2nd of the 10 metre Christmas "red only" snake lights I bought just last week. These things are FANTASTIC for Astro camps :thumbsup: and it's a great time of year to be buying them! They throw a good red light, you can string them out between buildings, along walkways, etc, and the best thing was I managed to pick up 2 x 10 metre sets for only $10 each!!
The rest of Saturday was more "restful" with the remainder of our observing crew arriving - a smaller group than we had hoped for all up, with several people who had planned to come not making it, but those of us who made the effort all had a great weekend!
Dennis (Nightshift) also came out for the run on his relatively new Aquila motor bike for a day visit as promised. As Ron astutely pointed out even the bike had an Astronomical theme! :lol:
Joy went for a nap mid afternoon, I think Ron did the same thing not long afterwards, and Dennis headed off home again so Jeanette, Mike Chris and I decided to settle in and watch a movie on the big projection screen while waiting for other arrivals - the chosen movie being the 1950 classic "Destination: Moon" (a Robert Heinlein story).
:anaut:
Mike and Chris had settled for the standard chairs but Jeanette and I both fetched our respective personal comfy chairs. Mine apparently proved a little too comfy as somewhere in the middle of the movie my sudden snoring interrupted the feature. :zzz2: I therefore went back to my room and joined Joy by having a quick hour or so nap as well.
By sunset everyone had arrived, rooms were allocated, and dinner was cooking! Rowena was the last to arrive, and as none of us had met her yet face to face it was great to see her make it after all! ;)
During dinner time Mark came over to the camp briefly - as mentioned he had been playing cricket during the day - well now he had one ankle very tightly bound and was hobbling badly. It turns out he went to make a quick run during the match and as he described it later "went down like I was hit by an axe" when he took off and snapped his Achilles tendon!
:sadeyes:
Poor bugger, hope you heal quick Mark, I hope the fact that the school year is pretty much ended will take some of the workload off you and your ankle!
After dinner the rest of us all ventured over to the field around 7:30 to find a reasonably clear sky, quiet sufficient for us to enjoy a mag 1.6 Hubble flyover!
During the course of the evening however the sky was patchy, very patchy. Various sized bits of cloud rolled in and out for ages, sometimes the sky was totally covered, other times mostly clear but the seeing was pretty off again due mainly to moisture.
No one was going to give up too easily so we sat and talked and joked and it was just like being with a bunch of old friends sitting around the camp fire chatting (a metaphorically camp fire that is!).
Some where near midnight a cuppa break was called and in everyone wandered up to the hall to grab a quick drink, or to stay and chat a while there. This time only us 4 guys (Ron, Mike, Chris, and myself) returning to the field, the ladies all calling it quits for the night.
"You snooze, you lose" :P
After 1 am or so the sky started clearing, a lot, then suddenly by 2am it was clear, I mean Clear - seeing 9 out of 10 or better, no clouds, and Dark - THIS was the kind of sky that Barambah had promised us and now finally delivered!
:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Ron was observing Mars with a 9mm ep on top of a 2x barlow - in his 16" dob (1828.8mm fl) thats 406x - we were seeing clear steady views of surface detail in his scope. I could see the same detail in my 12" dob but not quite as large, settling for using my 8mm for 187x.
:astron:
Saturn rose from the trees and looked fabulous, displaying 4 moons clearly (the 5th may have been eclipsed / transitting at the time as the seeing should have easily allowed us to find it easily, I can often pick it up from my yard at home.
The entire area around the Orion nebula was stunning, I could see the Flame nebula easily, I split Alnitak for the first time with no problems. ;)The Horsehead eluded me as I expected it might, although Ron said he could just pick up the surrounding nebulosity in his scope.
The Carina Nebula was fantastic as expected, and the Homonculous was as clear as any view of it I have ever seen, in fact so much clearer than I have ever seen it that I could barely believe it.
:eyepop:
The entire northern band of the Summer Milky Way simply glowed, The LMC and SMC stood out like - well, you know what ;).
I took the opportunity to try the Saxon binoviewer I was given over a year ago for the first time, equipped with 2 x 17mm Hyperion ep's. I need more counterweight on the base end of my OTA I can tell you, but apart from that it was pretty good! I have some fine tuning to do but I was worried that it wouldn't have sufficient in-focus to work, I've read this comment time and again in relation to dobs and binoviewers. All I can say is that this combination in my scope worked a treat and I had in-focus to spare.
The downside of a summer camp is that we began to see daylight creeping into the eastern sky prior to 4am (I guess it is only 2 weeks until the Solstice after all) so we packed it in and headed for bed, well satisfied by the fantastic viewing.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday was a day of clearing, cleaning and packing and I'm pleased to say that everyone chipped in and helped, thanks very much to all of you!! That took a great load of Joy and myself, although it was still 2:30 pm before we finally left Barambah, satisfied that we left the camp was as spotless as when we had arrived, and that we'd therefore be welcome to return to use this facility again.
I want to thank everyone who came along and helped make this first Dark Sky Camp such a friendly and sociable event.
:thanks:
For those who wanted to come along but couldn't make it I hope you can join us next time, I personally can't wait until the next camp in when we will have longer nights and even better skies!
:thumbsup: