No image yet, sorry, buuut juuuust keeping everyone in the
why the heck is Mike not imaging yet??, loop....
So, aaaalmost had first light on Saturday night
...everything set, managed to get the new location coordinates of Eagleview Observatory into the mount, had a good WiFi connection in the dome, cameras booted up and software ready....aaaand, of course, the rain started, faaaark!
It was predicted patchy cloud, slowly decreasing to clear around 10pm or so, so I had thought I could generally shake the system down, refining mount pointing, focusing off axis guide cameras etc, while it was patchy cloud and then get into it once it cleared...well, not quite. It remained mostly cloudy and drizzled and rained, on and off until 10:30pm, by which time it had become thick fog (basically we were inside the clouds) with a handful of hazy stars and Jupiter visible, so I decided to write the night off and go to bed. I woke just after 1am, sadly with a bit of an upset stomach
but checked outside anyway ...aaaand wouldn't you know it??..absolutely crystal clear, super dark sky, full of sparkling stars, surprisingly bright and billowing Milky Way star clouds hugging the entire south-western horizon and hardly a breath of wind!...I thought arrrggg! do I get into it???... but I didn't feel very well and Murphy would surely make it cloud over as soon as I got everything ready again, plus I was in sleep mode
. Needless to say, when I woke up at 7:30am Sunday morning (feeling much better mind you) and looked out the window, secretly praying it would be overcast, just to give me some symbolic vindication,....as the attach photo testifies, it was a crystal clear blue sky
....would have been a spectacular 4hours or so of darkness had I stayed awake at 1am ...DOH!..Sigh...I'll get there...eveeeentually...
Becasue it was being played in NZ, I did get to watch the All Blacks school the Wallabies in Rugby (yet again...), while enjoying a nice bowl of tasty pasta with a glass of red, before all of the above....(maybe it was this that upset my stomach..?)
Mike