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Old 13-01-2005, 10:23 AM
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iceman (Mike)
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Gosford, NSW, Australia
Posts: 36,799
Talking Some old friends..

This morning the sky was magic.. I was doing some imaging because the seeing was so great.. unfortunately imaging for me is a busy time, constantly realigning etc, so I don't get a chance to just look up much..

But I took a break and put an eyepiece in and enjoyed some old friends that I hadn't seen in a while..

NGC4755 - the jewelbox cluster.. beautiful little open cluster near the south (?) edge of the southern cross.. visible in binoculars but resolves nicely at medium powers in a telescope, showing the "traffic light" stars near the middle - 3 stars in a line each with a different colour.

NGC5319 - omega centauri.. ahh, my old favourite, I missed her How I long for a widefield eyepiece. With the 15mm in @ 83x the stars filled the view, thousands of tiny points of light.

I had a quick look at alpha-centauri and acrux while I was there, both resolved into their doubles easily with the 15mm.

One time also, while I was imaging, I looked up towards the East and saw a bright star (at least as bright as jupiter which I was imaging) that wasn't there before! "what the!?" was my initial thought, but a split-second after that thought, I noticed it moving, and then getting fainter.. Turns out it was "Iridium 3", peaked at magnitude -2.

Anyway was a great morning.. my new jupiter images are in the solar system forum.
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