It was an honour to have the pleasure of IIS moderator and longtime friend, David Hough, who came all the way from Newcastle, over the weekend up at Eagleview
Another, newer friend, Phil Rogers from Canberra, also joined us on Saturday night, keen to capture some photons.
Having left Newcastle at the crack of dawn, The Hough arrived on Friday morning and we met up at 10:45am in Michelago, south of Canberra on what was a magnificent clear blue sky day and drove up the windy Mt Wilson'esque Tinderry mountain road in convoy, stopping along the way at the 1076m level for a photo op looking down over the Monaro valley and arrived at the 1450m summit just before midday. We enjoyed a bit of a tour of the property, in windy but sunny blue sky conditions, always good for anticipating a night/weekend of astronomy ahead
The weather prediction models had been in a constant state of flux during the week, changing each day as Friday drew nearer but although some clear skies were most probable over the three nights, the likely best night/s kept changing
Regardless of the clearness, it was clearly the wind that was going to be the wild card. Spring is notoriously windy in the Canberra region during spring, in fact much of SE Aus is, so them's the breaks I guess..?
In the end, it was a mixed bag. Friday was patchy cloud and too windy to do anything (frustrating!) so we ate, drank and gas bagged the night away. Saturday was pretty good and mercifully, turned on only a very light breeze and apart from some on and off faint dark patches of mostly high cloud, remained mostly clear until about 3am Sunday. So, apart from the obligatory, away from home technical issues, for both Houghy and Phil, all of us managed to collect some data, yaaay! (I managed to get 6.5hrs of good data
). Sunday night was mostly clear but with patchy cloud again... but the wind had picked up to uncomfortable levels again, soooo both
approaching the "elderly" classification now and still a little tired from the previous sleep deprived night, it was enough to twist our arms and force us inside to reluctantly drink alcomohol, watch a Netflix doco and a movie and talk everything astro, so not complaining!
A highlight and in true star party fashion, after an almost all-nighter, on Sunday we drove down to the Michelago General Store Cafe (20min away) for a delicious moreish works burger with hot chips and gravy and esspresso for lunch, eeeexcellent, jet lagged after star party, food!
All in all, a ball of a weekend...I think Alex would have enjoyed the burger photo
Cheers Houghy and Phil, it was great fun.
Mike