After so many months of very poor conditions, tonight is making up for it in spades. What a cracker! The whole Milky Way from Sag to Canis Major (sinking in the west with his tail sticking high
) is simply glowing. Fantastic. I can just make out Sigma Octans above the faint glow of Brisbane, 100 km away. Straight up though, the sky is awash with faint stars. Ya gotta luv a good dark site.
It's a bit cool at around 5deg, but there is not a breathe of wind, and it is bone dry, no dew anywhere except on the grass where even there it is only just enought to leave small spots of water on my hand. The transparency is around 9/10 and even the seeing looks pretty good. (I'm not doing any high magnification stuff so I can't really tell how good, but the guide star is pretty stable in the ol' PhD Guiding screen
It's not jumping around like it normally is
)
It's nights like this I'm glad I'm an amateur astronomer.