10-4-06 What's it like at your place tonight.

[[1ponders]]

I thought I'd get a bit of a log going for tonight that everyone can add to as the night goes on.

What's it like at your place tonight?

Here on the Sunshine Coast it's a lovely night. Some fairly significant clouds rolling through but with equally significant clear skies. Probably 65/35 clear to cloudy, which ain't bad after the lousy skies we've had here for months. It's a dry night at only 17 deg with no sign of dew yet. When the clouds pass it's crystal clear. Even though the moon is like a lighthouse the skies are actually quite dark considering. Must be pretty clean air/good transparency.

If only the seeing was that good. I though I might try a bit of a mosaic tonight of the moon using the ToUcam in my Orion80. HA! The moon looks like it's made of jelly and its doing a cross country dirtbike race. Through the 16 T2 it looks like the moon is shivering. Not so much roiling air in between, but like the air is shaking. In the ToUcam.....forget it :rolleyes: . Still it's a lovely night sitting out here away from the lights and the noise of the television set. Yep I'm in the back yard now. Don't ya just luv modern wireless technology. :D

I'm hoping that the seeing will improve before the 22:35 GRS Meridian crossing tonight.

Whooops, where did all that cloud come from. Looks a bit nasty and grey. Fingers crossed.

So what are you up to tonight?

[iceman]

About the same.. the scope is out cooling down, waiting for Jupi later tonight. However the jetstream map looks terrible so i'm not confident of much fun.

Have also been eyeballing the almost full moon. My almost 2-year old daughter Abbey loves looking at the moon, so over the last week we've been watching every evening as it rises in the north east. I saw a nice 22-degree halo around the moon about 30 minutes ago during one of my trips outside to see if the high hazy cloud has disappeared. It hasn't. But at least it gave me the halo to look at.

If the cloud disappears i'm going to use the 350D afocally to take some moon shots, for something different. Plus, it might get Terry off my back about it for a little while :)

But i'm also planning to sleep.. my wife has a rotten flu at the moment so i've been home today (and all weekend) looking after 3 kids and a sick wife. I'm buggered!

Great thread!

[Striker]

Really calm and nice night here in Brisbane....virtualy like daylight at my house with the moon out.

Been testing guiding...my 12 minute guiding test image turned out really well...no sign of star trails.

Pretty happy considering I couldn't even autoguide for 30 seconds 3 months ago.

It all packed up now meaning I have turned the power off and closed the roof...lol..sorry.

[[1ponders]]

:lol: And they say husbands make the worst patients.:rolleyes: :lol: I know what it means to be married :lol: Well I hope Icemanswife gets better soon. The flus never nice at any time. The bright side of it is that now she will have her immunity built up before the winter season and will be fine to look after you and the kids when you come down with it. That's how it works isn't it :)


Yeah I don't hold much hope that in the next hour and a half it'll settle down. It is nice to be back out again though. Besides there was the odd spot of drizzle in that last cloud. It's gone now but looks like more coming

[Miaplacidus]

Well, I've not long upgraded my Megrez to an apo, and tonight I installed the two-speed microfocuser. You can guess the rest...

Hope your wife is feeling better soon, Mike.

Early night for me. Good luck with your imaging.

Brine.

[JohnG]

Solid cloud cover, no wind, 18.8C and 82% humidity, definately no observing tonight. Only decent thing today was watching the replica of Cook's Endeavour sail past close inshore.

JohnG

[beren]

Cloudy Raining And Pitiful......:sadeyes: but good luck to those with better conditions

[Vermin]

It's like this (playing with new 30D):

[[1ponders]]

Well somebody up there must like me. It settled down enough for me to snatch a half a dozen or so Avies of the GRS meridian cross. 4 or 5 leading up and a couple after. Seeing is like mush again now. So I'm happy. I've shot a dozen avies of the moon without a barlow and then a couple of dozen with. I'll stitch each lot together and then mask the hi res ones under the low res. I might be able to push the sharpening a bit with the high res and then hide the noise and artifacts with the low res. I'll see how I go anyway.

Damn lovely night out though. Very pleasant. It's 17 deg and most of the cloud has taken a hike. If I had a bit more ram in this laptop I'd sit out here and process my stuff all night. :stargaze: :computer: :astron: :camera: Sounds good to me :jump: :D

With a bit of luck it'll settle down in the next hour and I'm might get lucky and get a couple of shots of Little Red :clap:

[[1ponders]]

Pretty as a picture Tom. :) Nice Shot. Same about the clouds, but they do make a nice back drop.

[astro_south]

Paul

Conditions just a little south were pretty good. See the following:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=9093

[Dennis]

Hi Paul

Seeing is quite variable, great to excellent at times! There are some slow, large ripples interspersed with high frequency jitters with occasional patches of breathtaking clarity.

Managed to grab some avi’s of the Moon and Jupiter, but I had to pull the pin at 1:30am as I was hallucinating from last night's all nighter, no sleep for 40 hours.

Cheers

Dennis

[[1ponders]]

Hi Dennis.

I would have like to have stayed out longer, but I ran out of room on my laptop. All sorted now.

I've just started working on some of the stuff I shot last night. I've only done this quick test Reg and Autostitch to see how some of the runs worked out. Is it my imagination or has autostitch put this together with the bright limb slightly peaked in the middle? It also looks a little "narrow".

[Dennis]

Hi Paul

Looks good to me; mosaics are quite challenging and you have done a good job. My experience with autostitch is that it sometimes creates an image with "barrel" or "pincushion" distortion where the middle is expanded or pinched respectively, rather than linear. Not been able to pin this one down yet.

Here is Gassendi from last night - only 15 frames so it’s a little rough. :zzz:

Cheers

Dennis

[iceman]

Awesome job Andrew, Paul and Dennis!

I was out, the clouds cleared a little and I got some jupi avi's, but it wasn't a case of even suckerholes - it was clouds all over with varying brightness every couple of seconds. The seeing was quite good despite the jetstream, and it was most frustrating that the detail won't be quite as good tahnks to the clouds. Gain had to be up really high to get enough light during the cloudy bits, and then of course it peaked (overexposed) during the troughs.

Anyway might be something to salvage from it.

[[1ponders]]

Nice shot Dennis. Gassendi looked great last night, I spend some time before imaging burning my eyeballs out just looking at the moon. I thought about doing some specific imaging of that area but ran out of room :sad:

I know what you mean about distortion. I took about 90 avies of the moon the night before and just couldn't get the suckers to work in autostitch. Ended up with the weirdest shaped moon. I ended up ditching the lot. I've still got a lot of hi res ones to work with yet, from last night. Fingers crossed for them.

[astro_south]

Great shot Dennis

Here is my shot of Gassendi the night before last when it was on the terminator. It is a stack of 1 shot ;) - same camera as the Jove shot

[Nightshift]

Hi Paul,

I was out lastnight a little earlier with the 12" and Jup looked like a ping pong ball ricocheting around the inside of my tube, air was very turbulent, I gave up when I couldnt make out banding on the surface at 100X ????? Maybe I should have stayed up later.

Are you going to the comittee meeting on Thursday night?

[ving]

twas cold case night for me :)
spent the night curled up on the lounge with cheryl... spend so many nights like that, its very comfy :D
I did go out (scopeless) for a bit tho and for the most part it was cloudy for me with the moon shining thru the thinish clouds... i find that pretty in its own way...
while i was out there snowy (aka by his owner as pus pus (how original)) jumped the fence and smooched my legs asking for food. I obliged with some heaty morsels :) we have just about adopted him. :P


nice moon pics guys :)

[[1ponders]]

Ahh Andrew. Welcome to the dark side :evil: Great afocal shot Andrew :thumbsup:

Hi Dennis (Nightshift) yep I'll be there. There is a whole new go get 'em atmosphere now. Very exciting. Have you checked out the new webpage?

[Striker]

Andrew your a natural...all those years saying your solely the observer....come on.

Great shot.

Time to sell one of the kids and purchase some astrophotography gear.

[Dennis]

Hi Andrew

Here is my version of Gassendi, the same night as yours of 9th April. The avi was captured around 9:35pm, so we must have been chasing the same photons!

No wonder mine is a little underexposed, you must have sucked up all the spare photons with your excellent wide field shot. :whistle:

Cheers

Dennis

[astro_south]

..mmmm just got another kid....do you get more if they are trained or untrained?

Seriously though, I think I am too lazy to bother with astrophotography - I just run inside and grab the digi when the conditions are OK, stand there and rattle off a few for fun - most of them fail, but I get the occasional steady shot.

Nice detail in your Gassendi shot Dennis

Paul, my trips to the darkside are brief, I will be back to the side of good when the moon hides away ;)

In the face of all that is pure and good :D I have attached some more handheld shots of Plato I took last night showing a few craterlets. (Plato was just disappearing out the frame when I clicked one of them :( ) Visually I could easily pick out 6 craterlets consistently :thumbsup:

[[1ponders]]

"Visually"? what sort of camera is that? :P

Damn fine detail for hand held shots Andrew.

[ving]

yes indeed, those shots are some of the better hendheld shot i've seen andrew :)
just what is you camera?

[astro_south]

Ving - camera is a Canon A40 2Mp

[gaa_ian]

So Andrew, your night vision came back eventually after looking at the moon with that 31mm Nagler :P

[astro_south]

Sure did Ian - did yours?

[gaa_ian]

Eventually Andrew !