Siriusly good seeing in Melbourne

[PhilW]

The past 12 hours have thrown up some siriusly good seeing in inner Melbourne:

1) Last night, the pup (Sirius B) was an easy split around 8:30pm, possibly clearer than I've ever seen it. Eyepieces used were a Pentax XW 7, and a Pentax XF 8.5 + T-V 2x barlow

OK, then the cloud rolled in for the evening so I retired to watch Shrek with the kids for the nth time...

2) But this morning around 6:30am, I had the best view of Jupiter I've had this year. Every 30 seconds or so the image would magically clarify & it would look like one of Bird's photos. Eyepiece again a Pentax XW 7 (no time to try other eyepieces, since I had to get ready for work :mad2:).

Scope used was a 14" F/4.6 dob on an equatorial platform.

Phil

[goober]

Stop using my puns!

I was walking home from work at 8:30pm and it looked promising. I could see tons of naked eye stars that are usually invisible - transparency looked great. Got home, fed and ready to observe at 10:15pm and it was clouded out with a front starting to blow in. Sigh.

[Stephen65]

The sky looked good last night and the seeing looked good so I set up my EQ mount and Mewlon at sunset planning to do some lunar imaging around 1am. Then it clouded over and I had to hurriedly pull it all down because there was incoming rain on the BOM radar.

[ngcles]

Hi Phil & All,

Congrats on splitting Sirius -- must be a very nice, well collimated 14". Great feeling to see Jupiter like that -- pity it doesn't happen more often eh!

Best,

Les D
AS&T

[PhilW]

My Astrosystems collimator changed my life (for the better). It is a good snug fit in the focuser, & the magnetic barlow makes primary adjustment easy.

I find that getting the mirror to ambient temperature is also critical to get the best out of it. It needs a good 30+ minutes with the fan running to produce really tight star images.

Doug's point about the transparency is spot on. I have never been able to see all five stars in Musca naked-eye from my backyard before, but I did last night. We're only 4km from the city so the light pollution is pretty bad.