After a long period of clouds and bad weather in Sydney I bit the bullet and decided to head out to Ilford despite the weather forecast. I left Sydney Saturday morning under the rain, not expecting much but I had to "just get out" and take whatever would come my way. I arrived to partly cloudy skies in Wiruna and set up my scope and tent under sun showers . Then Rob (Astrodood) turned out and we looked at each other under sprinkling rain thinking "are we nuts or what?"
. Well guess what? Against all odds the skies opened up and we had two nights in a row of absolutely incredible seeing and transparency.
When I did my polar alignment with a 6mm illuminated eyepiece. I first thought something was wrong because my alignment stars weren't bouncing at all. Usually at that magnification it's like looking just above a hot plate, dancing and all. When I further did my focus run with the hartman, then bathinov masks on the CCD the diffraction spikes were unreal.
Anyway I've got so much data to process over the next few days. I thought I'd quickly post a couple of pictures of the imaging site next to the house. Will post the DSO shots when done after I have a good couple of days sleep. We really felt for the poor buggers who stayed in Sydney ... (not really) What a thunder light show it was looking East while we were imaging under pristine skies
