Well we had a very interesting night last Saturday with about 10 people coming around to Peters for an informal star party .
People started arriving about 6pm and by twilight the scopes were all set up ( see photo ) but there was an ominous dark cloud band decending from the north , lightning was seen in in the distance inside this bad boy ,, oops
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So we pulled the scope under cover and watched this monster decend on Perth , and what a spectacular show it put on , over an hour of full on lightning and thunder but luckily it passed just west of us so we only got a few rain spits , nothing more .
I managed to snap a few lightning shots with my Windows phone , man that is hard !!!.
But after the storm passed the sky cleared and we were treated to some of the steadiest skies I have ever seen , Sirius was rising in the south east and was hardly twinkling , E and F stars in the trapezium at about 15 degrees off the horizon were easily seen in my c9.25 at 125x and Simmo's 10inch SW Dob , well worth the wait .
But all good things come to an end as by 11pm the seeing was deterorating rapidly as more clouds rolled in so we called it a night .
All in all quite a different star party with mother nature putting on an awesome show , close at hand and in space , thanks all who attended and we will do it again soon
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Enjoy the photos .
Brian.
Having no end of trouble trying to down load photos , will try again soon ,,,,,,