At Mudgee Star Party for the weekend

[iceman]

My son Jacob and I are now sitting at Mudgee Maccas. We just got here after driving for the past 4hrs and 40 minutes.

We left cloudy rainy skies at home to a nice sunny and warm Mudgee. Hope it stays that way for the next 2 nights.

Looking forward to catching up with Les Dalrymple and others at the star party.

Will be nice to have some clear skies and capture some data for a change.

[Allan_L]

Hi Mike.
Good to hear there are clear skies so close today.
Greg (gb_astro) said he was going to Ilford this weekend too.
Looks like you guys made the right choice.
May be tempted to gate crash! :)
See you at the PC next time.

[mozzie]

have a great weekend mike!!!clear skies, post some pics?

is this the southerlend astro society star party????

[Menno]

Where in Mudgee is this held?
Is this a secret?
Regards
Menno

[madwayne]

The Mudgee Star Party is a Sutherland Astronomical Society (SASI) members party hosted at the Mudgee Observatory.

I was there from last Friday through to Wednesday this week when I had to leave in a hurry due to complications with dad's illness in Canberra.

Sorry I missed your presentation Mike but if the skies were as clear and the air as crisp as when I was there you should be in for a great time.

Wayne

[iceman]

Yeh it's the SASI event, and I was kindly invited along by Les since I'm not able to go to SPSP next month.

They are a great bunch of friendly people. I'm giving a talk this arvo - I haven't done it in a while, I'm sure it'll be a bit rusty but I'm sure they'll forgive me :)

It was a beautiful clear night last night. Not much dew until after 2:30am thanks to a persistent breeze.

I had one camera on the tripod snapping away every 30 seconds to do some timelapse, and had the other one piggybacked on the ED80 taking some widefield shots of Crux and later Scorpio. I hope they turn out ok.

Looks like another clear night for tonight so far - beautiful sunny skies now.

Looking forward to getting out amongst it again.

[Jen]

:thumbsup::thumbsup: have a great night, hope the skies stay nice and clear :)

[kustard]

Heya Mike, nice to meet you in person (hope Hannah didn't bug you guys too much, hehe).

Really enjoyed your talk and it is almost swaying me to at least get some simple photo gear to play with.

Looking forward to see some of the images you took whilst you were up there.

[iceman]

Thanks guys, and thanks Simon! I didn't know that was you :)

Hannah was a lovely little girl, and Jacob had fun playing with her. He was also very jealous of her DSi (he's got a normal DS) :)

Got home about 12:30 today, all unpacked now.

Lovely clear skies again last night but I didn't stay up and enjoy it. Tiredness from the night before, a guiding problem that wouldn't fix itself, and knowing I had a 5 hour drive ahead of me in the morning, forced me to bed early.

But I had a lovely time. The moon and venus last night were spectacular.

Thanks again to SASI for inviting me. Jacob and I really enjoyed it.

[kustard]

Hehe, yeah didn't want to come across as a crazy fanboi ;)

Jacob was the first kid Hannah had seen since Wednesday so she was crazy for some kid interaction :)

Glad to hear you had a good time :D

[ngcles]

Hi Mike, Wayne, Simon & All,

Wow, what a star-party and to answer the inquiries, yep this is a "SASI members only or by-invitation" star-party held annually at Mudgee every year for the last 14 years.

Thanks Mike for the talk and glad you had a good time -- it was nice to finally actually meet.

We had four virtually completely cloud-free nights (about a total of 1 hrs light cloud over the latter two nights) and I'm almost dead on my feet from observing (but it's a kinda nice feeling, ummm ... almost post-coital -- if you take my meaning!

Observed all four nights 7pm to about 3.30-4am. It will take me well over a month to type-up my 330-odd observations. :eyepop: The most interesting thing we saw over the whole weekend was in Gary Mitchell's 20" -- the tiny SNR remnant of 1987A at about x525. Incredible !!

Not only was it clear but warm during the nights and the temp didn't drop below 13 deg C. I was able to observe in shorts, tee-shirt and a light jacket all night, every night. :thumbsup: There was a bit of dew but not troublesome at all. Had a nice side-trip to Hill End on the Sunday as well.

Going down to unpack the car now and do the washing -- an irksome task.

Geat observing, great times, great to be a member of the best astronomical society in NSW if not Australia.

Thanks very much to our hosts and all the observing companions up there over the four nights.


Best (a very, very tired),

Les D