Bit of a quiet turnout at Ron's place last night. Just five of us enjoying a bewdiful clear night with no dew
Roll call: Yours truely, Astroron, Argonarvis and Nightshift. A friend of Rons Gordon, turned up later in the night. Unfortunately I didn't get the shot of Crux at 9:00 as it was right behind a tree and after getting my polar alignment "just right" I weren't moving
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For myself and Nightshift it was a bit of a night for experimenting. Him trying out his ETX-90 in polar alignment. He loved the accuracy but hated the viewing position. Back to AltAz for him
I spent the first part of the night improving the accuracy of my ArgoNarvis and just generally cruisin' the Cosmos. Astroron and Argonarvis seemed to be spending the evening hunting down obscure nebula and seeing how deeply they could see into faint nebula. I also managed to log all the DSO challenges for the month visually
Next is to do them photographically, maybe next Saturday night after moonset.
Towards the end of evening we were just hanging around waiting for Andromeda to rise. I'd swapped over from my Meade/Carlton over/under combo to my Orion/Celestron Side by Side combo, hoping to get a few images through the Orion. First light for it. Easy to balance, easy to move about, just got to tune the AN/Side by Side combo a bit, but over all happy with the performance.
Andromeda finally raised her head. Lovely through the binocs and the Orion. Unfortunately a few errant clouds started to move in about then so I only managed to snap of 1 image, but the autoguiding with the new rig needs to be tuned yet. I may post it later. bit of drift in it but some of the lanes came out quite clearly. Nightshift did a runner about then (wouldn't have him working for me at night if that's when he thinks the nights done
We stuck it for about another half an hour or so but by the look of the clouds rolling in it was time to pack it in.
All in all a thouroughly enjoyable night. Nice and warm, no dew to speak of, beautiful clear skies though a bit jumpy, and great company. What more could you ask for.
I'll let the images speak for themselves.