Just arrived back in Adelaide after a fantastic few days and nights. Great to catch up with everyone and special thanks must go to Ken for putting it on. Had fun during the day lounging around and chatting to others that actually share an interest in astronomical matters.
Friday night was nice and clear but the seeing was fairly ordinary to start with. Started off with the big bright DSOs for the adoring fans with the obligatory oohs and aahs.
Afterwards did a tour of various objects in Centaurus including squillions of galaxies and quite a few interesting planetaries.
Later on the seeing got much better giving solid, sharp views of Saturn through various scopes.
On the second night, I used the Argo Navis' Tour function to find many galaxies in Volans including one spectacular but very faint cluster of them around an ESO that I could not find in any references! Must track that one down again somehow. Also viewed the big, spectacular galaxies in Virgo and Coma B., since they were well-placed in the North. Also got some good views of the Horsehead thanks to Eric's 2" HBeta filter.
On the third day, Rob set up the mighty Tasco to view the sun and it revealed some complex sunspots.
The third night began with a look at some bigger emission Nebulae, using Eric's 2" OIII filter in the 28mm UWAN at 80X. The Rosette was nice but required the viewer to spiral around to get the whole thing in. Ditto for the Vela Supernova Remnant which is spectacular but huge! Saw the nebulosity around the Christmas Tree Cluster for the first time, but the Cone Nebula was only a slight darkening of the field, a bit like looking at the Horsehead without a filter. Then did a tour of Galaxies in Dorado.
The seeing was also very good on this night, and I was surprised by how easy it was to see Sirius B for the first time in Bird's scope. The sky started to cloud up more and more so brought an end to viewing by about 1am, so most retired to the kitchen for some talking rubbish.
Wish I could do this every month!