[rumples riot]

Well last night several iceinspacers got together for a mini star party at Cherry Gardens care of a friend Deane who owns a property which has reasonable dark skies. On board was Peter (Exfso), Bob (Gadget), Paul (Rumples Riot) a friend Nick, and one of Deanes friends.

We arrived at the site around 5:30 pm to allow time for setup. We setup our scopes with gusto as all were looking forward to a great night. Several comments were made about this being the first star party from Ice in Space members from South Australia. Of greater concern was the looming clouds on the western horizon. I assured all that the weather report was very favourable and that clear skies had been predicted. Mind you I did wonder looking at the clouds.

As dark approached several of us took to eating our evening meals or "nose bags" and this gave an opportunity to meet up with Deanes friend (whose name escapes me at present) who was so impressed with the equipment, so we invited him to stay and have a look.

On dark everyone started aligning their individual scopes Peter had his 10" with an German EQ mount, Bob with his Lx90 8" and myself with the Lx200 10". I discovered that the power coupling that I borrowed from Bob had some sort of defect and so had to move my car closer so that I could run the scope. Peter had his own problems with setting up on the pole. However once this was done we got to the business of observing.

First target of the night was Saturn, it was interesting to compare images between Peters Schmidt Newtonian and the Lx200. I noted that the Newtonian was much crisper and had a brighter image, however the Lx200 had greater image scale. All the new comers were uttering the well heard "Wow" over Saturn. We also later watched a shadow transit of Io on Jupiter which was well received. The seeing was very good in general and we lamented not bringing a laptop tp image with. Murphys law!

As for targets observed during the course of the night they were as follows. Jupiter, Omega Centauri, Centaurus A, M104, M83 , Eta Carina, jewel Box, Tarantula, Ngc 4945, Great orion nebula, Acrux, Alpha Centauri, and many others in the constellations of Scorpio and Centaurus.

Early into the evening the dreaded dew struck, Bob and Peter had applied their dew sheilds from the start and I had gone for the dew heater, I discovered that the connection to my dew heater was not passing electricity to the heater and I had dew all over the corrector plate. So I changed batteries and hoped that it would stop the dew from completely covering the scope. I had effectively gained a 5" scope and the images reflected this. That being said, within two hours I noted that I only had a little dew left on the corrector and breathed a sign of relief. Bob's scope on the other hand had dew all over the corrector plate and strangely Peter's scope had dew on the inside of the corrector. Not enough to affect performance though.

While out there, we used a variety of eyepieces to observe with. Peter brought his 24mm panoptic Televue, which I used for quite some time. I have one of those on my list of EP's to buy and this opportunity confirmed my want. Peter also brought his Coke can EP (the Meade 14mm UWA series 4000). This is a very good EP, I noted that star images were sharp all the way to edge of field and the brightness of the image was good. It is a very heavy EP and some consideration to its weight should be made. I brought my usual complement of EP's including my Nagler 9mm. I really enjoyed using this EP for planetary viewing because I did not need to put in a powermate.

At around 1:30 am we decide to pack it in, several of us were getting tired and we began the task of packing and leaving.

As a final word, I have to say that the night was most enjoyable, once the moon slipped away the sky opened up to show the milky way in all its glory. Thanks for all who came and to Deane who owns this great property. I am sure that Peter will add his own comments to the thread and look forward to his views. I am sure that I have missed heaps and ask him to fill in the gaps,

Below are some shots of the area and members attending. The first is all three scopes and Peter at work. The second is of Bob and the third is of Peter and his scope.