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Has been a great day, an absolutely beautiful day on the mid north coast. Nice warm temperatures, feels like Spring! I went for a long walk along the beach, v-wall and through the town this morning, then back into town for lunch with Anthony.. Must've walked 5-7klms today.
Now it's the middle of the 2nd night, and man it has been a great night.
A very strong on-shore breeze in the afternoon and early evening had us worried, but we were also hoping that as it died down, a nice laminar on-shore flow would provide some very good seeing.
And it hasn't disappointed.
Even when Jupiter was only 15deg, through the eyepiece it was excellent. It started off pretty good with the CCD in, and got better as the night has gone on with periods of superb seeing - looks to be the best i've had all year.
Anthony and I are full of oohs and aahs and the odd expletive thrown in as the seeing steadies to see details in the raw frames that we usually only see in processed images. It's just been an amazing night.
It's also been very interesting to compare our side by side views on the laptop - Anthony's raw images show much more consistent clarity, and we agree that it's due to:
a) my lack of active cooling and the tube currents
b) his more sensitive and less noisy camera
It's also so great to see his setup in action, 1 click to start recording, and it changes filters and re-focus and it's recording the next channel in the space of 1.5 seconds.
Anyway time for a meridian flip, let's hope the seeing continues on the other side!
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