Look out weather coming

[rumples riot]

Hey all you Easterners, watch out for the clouds coming your way. They started early this morning 23.12.04 just after sunrise and are pretty thick here, checked the infrared and it was a pretty thick cloud bank. It should get to you guys by late this afternoon or early evening. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Its not all bad though; we are expecting to get clear skies in about two hours. I'll be thinking of you tonight while I am imaging.:P :D

Paul

[iceman]

Yep we're expecting to have a cloudy couple of days and more of the same on xmas day..

Doesn't worry me too much, doubt i'll be doing much observing or imaging in the next few weeks cause i'll be on holidays in port macquarie and bellingen..

Though I do want it to be clear on holidays, i'm taking my binoculars with me, and my parents house at bellingen is nice and dark.

[silvinator]

hiya Paul, thanks for the heads up! Rub it in why don't ya!!! :P Anyhoo, it was actually overcast last night and you're right, it does look pretty thick out there. But no observing the next few nights as there are too many xmas feasts to be prepared. Enjoy your imaging though.
Hey Ice, where is Bellingen? Don't forget to take a star map of some sort so you know what you're looking at. You have to take advantage of every dark sky any chance you get so have fun.

[ving]

hope it doesnt rain this afternoon! I was planning on going out geocaching! :(

oh and looking thru my scope at night...
but the main thing is that its NOT ALLOWED to rain this arvo!

[silvinator]

well, it's predicted there will be thunderstorms Ving, sorry to burst your bubble. PS: what's geocaching?

[rumples riot]

Yeah whats that???

[ving]

simply put, its treasure hunting with a gps.

you are given co-ordinates and clues as to where the cache is and you have to find it. its a fun way of staying fit :)
caches can be hidden anywhere, parks, mountains, cliffaces, bushland, under water....

http://www.geocaching.com/about/
:D

[iceman]

It's about 6.5 hours north of sydney, just south-west of coffs harbour.

And yep, i've already planned to take the star charts, camera and tripod.. I plan on taking some dark sky widefield constellation shots.

[silvinator]

Hey Ice, just so you know, everytime somebody posts a link, it doesn't show up as a link for me. I have to copy and paste it into my web browser. Is this true for everyone or is it just me? At the moment, I can see your links in your signature but the above link that Ving just posted is not a hyperlink.
Anyway, back on topic, gee Bellingen sure is far. What camera are you planning to take the widefield shots with? Be sure you get comet machholz in some of those shots! It would look spectacular as a wide field.
Ving, sounds...interesting :P At first, I thought you misspelt something (what I don't know). But well you learn something new everyday! Have you found any interesting caches yet? Hehe, I like the bit about what not to put in caches!

[iceman]

Silvie, it's because Ving used the "quick reply" box, and the links are not converted to hyperlinks in the quick-reply.

If you use "post reply" button, it will convert them to hyperlinks.

Alternatively, ving (or anyone) can use the BB tags, [ url]http://blahblah.com[ /url] (remove the space) would come out as http://blahblah.com

I'm just going to use my sony dscp100.. it might capture maccholz as a smudge but probably not much more :)

It's teh same camera I used to take these widefield shots (http://www.iceinspace.com/?widefield).

[ving]

its because i'm lazy.... :(

yup, I am a lazy lazy man!

L... A... Z... Y man

[rumples riot]

Well weather was good yesterday morning and with the cooler weather the seeing improved out of sight. As some of you may know I imaged Jupiter for the second morning in a row and got better results. Looks like the cooler weather will be around for the next couple of days and this should suit good seeing. So if you get the chance, get out there and go for it. Viewing should be good and imaging should also be much better than recent weeks.

[silvinator]

thanks ice, that makes a lot of sense! so there Ving, it was all your fault! :P
Hey Paul, it's clear this morning, the day after the xmas whirlwind. Glad you got some good seeing on xmas. It was overcast here in western sydney, a good day for a barbie as it was neither too hot or too cold. But there was no use observing. Oh well, can't win em all.