Rather than ramble on in my usual laconic fashion
I'll try to keep this short and sweet and let the others fill in the colour
Saturday Night roll call:
Adelain (Adrian), Astroron (Ron), Astro_south (Andrew), mhodson (Mark), Nicko (Nick), Nightshift (Dennis), [1ponders] (yours truely).
Scopes on hand: ETX90, Nexstar 4, Celestron 80 ED refractor, Celestron 102 achro refractor, LX200 10" Classic, 12.5" Truss dob, 16" truss dob.
Accessories: Enough Naglers to sink a ship
Binoviewers
Setting: Astrorons place out the back of whoop whoop (Kenilworth 1 3/4 hours north-northwest of Bris Vegas)
Last night was one of the better night of the observing year. The afternoon started clear though with heavy rain cloud to the north, that was drifting to the East south-east. (sort of towards us) Dennis, Mark and I were the first to arrive around mid afternoon and promptly started to set up. We were keen to try a bit of daylight planet observing. With Dennis' little etx roughly aligned he tried to find Venus, while Mark used his 20 X 60? binocs. Mark spotted something very bright (thinking it was Venus at first) but moving very fast to the Northeast. The only thing we could put it down to was the ISS. Unfortunately it wasn't due then. Since then I've found in Starry Night that the satellite Meteor 1-7 at mag -0.52 (4:30 pm EST) flew through at that time. A very auspicious start to the night we felt. We quickly found Venus then proceeded to see how many planets we could see during daylight hours. Notch up Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Jupiter. It was a first for all of us. 4 planets during daylight hours with the sun still well above the horizon.
It wasn't long before Andrew, Adrian and Nick arrived and the final phases of setting up were complete. Just as twilight was starting, in rolled that cloud
Drift aligning became quite a challenge, while the Dobs and gotoers chased gaps in the cloud. It wasn't looking good. By about 7:30 though the sky cleared, to what was starting to look like a good night. By the time it was fully clear, transparency was around 8-9 (bitingly sharp), unfortunately seeing was only very mediocre, 3-5 out of 10 (I'm being generous).
While I started the automated camera action, the big dobs were in their element and we were loving it. Andrew had his new 31mm Terminagler with his new Neb1 filter. The triffid looked like a grey scale photograph it was so clear and well defined, as were many other nebs during the night. The veil neb, later on, looked fantastic. With two big dobs running Ron and Andrew covered just about any popular object you could think of, globs, galaxies, planetaries (and planets Uranus and Neptune, six planets now for the night), nebula, comets (Temple and Macholz). These two are awesome to watch in action. Pick an object and quicker than you can walk over its in the eyepiece. But for some of us the real highlight for the nights viewing were the meteors and fireballs. There were dozens and dozens of meteors. None coming from any particular radiant. And there were easily 2 dozen eyepopping tail smoking, head flaring, gobsmacking small to medium fireballs. They were everywhere all night. Which amazes me that I didn't get a single one on image.
Adrian, Dennis and Mark decided to head off sometime round midnight(??), while Ron, Andrew, Nick and I pushed on til 4:30 ish. The wind started to pick up but the visibilty was still crystal clear (still poor seeing). Mars came up which brough our tally to 7, 8 including the one we were standing on. Not a bad talley for the night. Didn't get round to pluto. Next year
Ron gave Andrew and I a bit of a tour of the galaxies he surveys for supernova in the wee hours of the morning. When you see how dark his sky is so close to Brisbane it's easy to understand how he can see such faint fuzzies.
By 4:30 we were done in. But not before I managed (just) to get my first view and image of M31. I've wanted that one for quite a while now and it just topped the night of right.
I'm sure I've missed heaps, and the others will hopefully fill you in on the details. May be even a few piccies
.
Thanks for a fabulous night Ron. I can certainly recommend Rons place for a fantastic view. He even kept the dew off. My 50mm lens didn't fog up once during the night, though there was a bit of moisture on cold metal surfaces. How's that for a host
Cheers