Ravenswood camp.

[Liz]

Got back yesterday from a wonderful time had by the Townsville Astronomy Group. We headed to Ravenswood Friday (2 hrs from me) and set up camp under some lovely clear, but FREEZING skies!!
Ravenswood is a little old goldmining town, heritage listed I think.
Was very relaxing and lots of fun, with our scopes set up on the cricket patch at the Ravenswood Showgrounds. Had about 13 members and families head out, so a good trurnout for us.
The Friday night got down a freezing zero for us, :eyepop: and the skies were pretty dark (nearby mine) and clear. Lots of goodies seen and enjoyed - lots of globs, galaxies, nebula etc. I loved seeing the group of galaxies in Grus (thanks Alex) - we saw 3 in the FOV, thought supp to be 4.
We manage to check out M51 (Whirlpool) and M101 (Pinwheel) which were hovering above the horizon in Ursa Major. :thumbsup:
On the last night I checked for Comet Tempel 10P, and found it straight away!!! :cool: A reasonable size blob, with the hint of ? 2 tails.
During the day we checked out a couple of sunspots, and I tried the solar filter on my scope too. Alas, when I took the filter off, I didnt move the scope, and cooked my EP!!!! :help: Moved it pretty quick when saw the smoke billowing out from the EP, and burnt my thumb in the process. A lesson well learned for our guys, though I would have preferred not being the one dishing out the lesson. My Vixen 40mm looks a right old mess. :sadeyes:
It was lucky that my brand new Televue Panoptic 19mm was not in there, then I would have been in a bit of a state. :sad:
We will definitely head back out next year!!
I will post some more pics in Images section. ;)

[Blue Skies]

:lol: oooh sorry, but someone always manages to do this! Or something similar. I've heard quite a few stories of people's scopes smoking. But on a serious note, I hope you took the lesson seriously and now know to be very safety conscious whenever you do solar observing. You can't blink fast enough to save your eye.

[renormalised]

Sounds like everyone had a great time:):)

Well....at least you learnt a handy lesson about the Sun!!.

[Suzy]

You sound like you had a fabulous time Liz, despite the cold :cold:. As I found out recently, my eyes will not focus properly when temp is 4 deg (so forget 0 deg for me) :rolleyes: - everything is fuzzy! (both naked eye & viewing thru scope). Frozen eyeball sydrome :screwy: :lol:.

And woah Liz, how about your ep!!! That's now two stories I've read this week on here from melted EPs from solar viewing :eyepop:. Those Vixens are like grenades, I'm trying to picture a melted one .. errr, any pics? :question:
Is this the Vixen LVW you recently bought? How did (oooh past tense) you find it?

Hope your thumb didn't get burnt too badly, is it blistered? Dangerous hobby that one. One, that I never plan on gettting into, just too scared. :sadeyes:

[Liz]

Thanks Jacqui, Carl and Suzy, yes, a lesson learned indeed. :sadeyes:
Did someone else burn their EPs this week Suzy? Nah, thumb Ok. ;)
Its lucky it wasnt one of my well used EPs, and not a Vixen LVW!!! I havent got one of those, but thought I ordered one Suzy?? Must go through my records, been busy of late.
A fantastic weekend though, and only the nights were cold, days were gorgeous.