[ngcles]

Hi All,

In did clear up in Sydney ... in the end.

The numerical weather prediction was for it to clear in Sydney on the night of Sat/Sun 16&17th January sometime around midnight after days and days of cloudy and sometimes rainy sky. Jet-stream maps and the numerical weather also predicted good to very good seeing.

For what it's worth, from my own experience and after looking at the cloud pics and animations, I agreed and thought 11pm was possible, maybe even probable for the low-pressure trough and associated storm-front to pass over. There was a nice big pool of cool, stable and clear air behind it -- maybe 10 hrs worth. Having had little telescope time in the last few months, I was pretty deperate ...

As we'd thought, drove down to my spot near Bargo in rain/thunderstorm, arrived just before 9pm. It was almost dark, still raining moderately with lots of puddles on the ground and a few little creeks running here and there across the strip west to east. Gary arrived about 9.20pm by then the rain had thinned out to odd-spots, then light drizzle and finally stopped.

Just after 10pm we (Gary, Serge & myself) decided to head down the recreation club for a quick-one in the hope that if we paid no attention to the sky and pretended we wern't all that interested, it might clear-up while we were there. Besides, there were a couple of lightning-flashes to the southwest that looked a little threatening ...

We arrived down at the club and couldn't get in as they were closing in 1/2 hr. We thought about going to the pub instead and went to get back in the cars when we noticed a few stars started to poking-out through the clouds so we headed back to the strip.

By 10.45pm it was clearing rapidly and we began to set-up. 11.30pm totally clear and stayed that way until we left at 3.50am. The seeing was pretty good without being sensational. Very dewy for January. Spent some time in Antlia road-testing my own column for the latest issue of AS&T and seeing some new objects there and then in Carina and Centaurus. Good look at the Homunculus. First look at Saturn for the year about 3am -- nice.

More detailed report will probably follow later if I don't get side-tracked ...


Best,

Les D