Top night of observing at Lake Mountain

[janoskiss]

My fellow Victorians! The weather is fantastic with light winds and high fire danger :D and the Moon is a thin crescent, so get out your scopes ready for tonight! Me and the Dobbie are going to drive out to Marysville and then up Lake Mountain for some dark skies at altitude. :jump2: :jump2: :jump2:

:stargaze:

[Hitchhiker]

Go for it! :astron:

At least someone is getting some clear skies. Nothing but cloud and rain up here.:mad2:

[Starkler]

:jump2:

This cant be right? I received my argonavis yesterday and the weather gods are cooperating :confuse3:
Im going down the peninsula tonight and breaking in the argo :D

[h0ughy]

Just don't "break" it, and have lots of fun :wink2:

[Dave47tuc]

I'll bring the fine adjuster :bashcomp: :lol: :lol:

[mick pinner]

just went outside to have a look and you can see Venus about 5 degrees east of the moon in broad daylight, must be in for a good night, will have to blow the cobwebs of the 35mm.

[h0ughy]

we have wall the floor cloud and water enjoy guys and take lots of pictures :)

[Starkler]

No cloud in Vic, Southerly winds off the ocean for good tranparancy, no jetstream.
Is it too good to be true? :prey:

[Striker]

Glad some of us have the weather to do some observing/imaging tonight...I dont think Brisbane will ever clear up.

Take it while you can get it Victoria.

[xrekcor]

We had excellent clear weather here after 2am this morning, Saturn was spectacular!!!
But clouded in tonight again : ( oh well I guess an early called up at 3am to listen to
the All Blacks play Wales BBC online radio, then watch the Wallabies play France @ 6:30am on TV

regards,CS... if only!!!

[robin]

Weather in Warrnambool is unbelievable.Im sunburnt & wind burnt.Up till 2am this morning imaging mars.Seeing was good.Up late again tonight.Funny how you breeze through the day when you've had a top night with excellent seeing the night before.

[h0ughy]

Looking at the radar for newcastle it looks as though the could may just clear, possibly by Midnight???

[ballaratdragons]

I hope the folks up at VicSouth are having as good a time as you are in Melbourne coz it's bad here! Transparency 7/10 seeing 5/10 and very windy! and they are not very far from here. It was the same last night too.

Robin, I got bad sunburn too down at Eastern Beach Geelong today and it was a perfect day but soon as I got back to the country it was lousy again.

I have'nt bothered getting the scope out tonight or last night, it's not worth it here.

[Starkler]

Well the map showed no jetstream but the seeing was terrible and got worse as the night went on :(

[danielsun]

hey Geoff frustrating huh!! it actually wasnt too bad at my end , not fantastic but best ive had for a while!!
did you manage to give the argo a bit of a run? and how did you go mounting it and setting it up ?

[janoskiss]

My friends (Ms Dob and Mr ED) and I just got back from our little trip. I'm exhausted and feverish (you know the kind :D ) but I've had a magnificent time. I ended up observing at the Albert Gap carpark along the road up to Lake Mountain (few kms from the summit). It's a very large flat bit of gravel at 1250m altitude. Because the area is so big it's perfect for observing, you can see in every direction down to 15-20 degrees above the horizon. Great site just 100km from Melbourne! :thumbsup:

Everything was just about perfect. Early in the night I could feel a bit of dampness on the scopes, table & chairs, but then the everything dried up stayed dry for the whole night. I didn't pack up till twilight.

Skies were nice and dark. Maybe I could still see some skyglow from Melbourne, but I could see stars marked mag 6 on my charts and I'm short sighted. Here through the ED80, 47Tuc looked like it does through the 200mm Dob from my backyard. Dark skies rock! :D

I spent most of the night hunting galaxies. Never seen so many! For the first time I actually saw the spiral arms of a galaxy. NGC 1365. Took me a while with different eyepieces and averted vision, but then there they were. Two arms curved counter-clockwise. I was absolutely ecstatic. :jump2: :jump2:

I also revisited old favourites and spent some time with LMC and SMC. Mars and Saturn looked pretty good too at over 200x, with lots of surface detail on both and a sharp Cassini division on the rings. Not quite up to Snake Valley standards but still pretty good seeing compared with what I'm used to. I think the altitude must have helped a lot.
:astron:

Gone bushwalking along "The Beeches" tracks today to top off a great w/e. We don't appreciate how lucky we are in this wonderful land of Oz. :poke:

Sorry for the lengthy post, I'm still hyped.
:stargaze: :sunny:

[xstream]

Glad to hear you had a great night Steve.
The night was crystal clear here aswell but the seeing was you know, that word we're not allowed to use. :)

[xrekcor]

You mean Australia actually has a hill that high? man I'll have to go there and
see this for myself :P

regards,CS

[janoskiss]

Rob, The summit's 1400m+ and Mt Buller is not that much further and its 1800m+. I might go there to observe next time for good seeing. But mountains are also known to attract clouds... :confuse3: I have to learn more about micrometeorology or whatever they call it.

[h0ughy]

I am so glad you had a great trip, where are the souvenirs for the trip?? ANy images of the site and the skies?

[janoskiss]

Sorry, no pics Houghy. My real camera uses film so I need to be conservative with what I shoot. ... and my digital camera runs out of batteries in 5 minutes (so 240V AC use only).

[Dave47tuc]

Nice report Steve. :thumbsup:
We got togeather with the usual mob . Got the big Tak, out for Mars and it was about the worst seeing of seen for a while :sad:

Oh well looks as if we are in for some rain. Hope that clears things up a bit.
Hope to get a shot a Mars again later in the week. :)

[Stu]

The Tak! The Tak! :prey2: :astron: :eyepop:


Hey if you get it in Marks Will can I get it in your Will?

Now, how many years is that? Umm.....:P

[Starkler]

I liked Gregs comment after we had packed up and we were in Marks shed standing around Julians obsession , he walks in and asks "are you all worshipping the telescope god" :prey2:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[astroron]

I'm glad somone is getting some observing done, all as we have seen in Queensland for a while is clouds and rain.
Friday night got cought by a sucker hole, 7:30 pm sky looked ok, few clouds in the east on the Horizon, but not much, I wheel out the 16" get a quick look at a couple of galaxies a 30 second look at Mars and in no time at all it was completly clouded over, so put it away again, it just ain't fair.astroron :sad: :sad: :sad: