Like a few others have enjoyed on the east coast of Australia over the recent week or so and after a rough El Nina influenced past couple of months that has delivering lots of cloud and rain, fiiinally (bar one massive rain and hail downpour) sky conditions have once again been excellent up at Eagleview...yaay! Most of the last couple of weeks has delivered fully or partially clear nights as the Moon has waned
...and predictions suggest it will continue for a few more days yet
This turn in the weather has been great for viewing Comet Leonard and although I haven't imaged it, I have had great fun viewing it naked eye each evening (easy to spot each night with direct vision) and with binoculars. Tonight there was not a breath of wind and the sky was very dark and transparent, with SQM (now using a calibrated unit!
) readings of between 21.88 and 21.93. So, using my 10X50 Binos, I was able to trace Leonards striated tail, past the distinct knot feature visible at about 6deg from the nucleus and out to about 10-12deg or so long, beautiful
By about 10.45pm with the sky fully dark, the summer Milky Way running from Crux and Centaurus through to Orion and Taurus, was very bright and in fact rather similar in prominence and brightness to the winter Milky Way as it appears from my Wallaroo observing site, North of and much closer to Canberra!
The LMC and SMC were very bright as they both cross the meridian high this time of year and the LMC was huge with that almost spiral like structure quite prominent. I was able to spot Sigma Octans easily naked eye and the number of stars visible in Orion made it almost unrecognisable. Damn!...wish I had a 24" SDM
I shared the evening with a friendly wombat too, who munched continuously nearby
Nice to be back out under clear skies...bring on New Year
Mike