I had a dream run of weather at my dark site over the Christmas break. I had 10 out of 12 nights clear and 1 night clear for several hours.
It seems to me that the western side of the Great Dividing Range (leeward side) is the drier side and the usual weather pattern is that even if its cloudy during the day it very often clears after dusk when the air cools a bit and the clouds are reabsorbed so you often get completely cloudless nights. So if you are looking to find a nice location for dark imaging in NSW then I suggest the western side of the mountains. I have seen it time and time again. I left Sydney and it was completely overcast only to find completely cloudless skies all night there.
Seeing was variable with 3 nights of excellent seeing and several where it was OK to poor.
I managed to image the Pleiades on the night that had cloud come in at about 2:00 am giving me about 4 hours of available imaging time (dark is about 10pm now) .
AstroPhysics 140 scope with specialised reducer/corrector giving F5.6. This is no ordinary reducer as it gives .75X reduction but it also corrects the field so its pinpoint stars corner to corner on a 16803 chip.
A remarkable optical achievement. Such a great scope.
I wanted to bring out the background dust and nebulosity and managed to do so to some degree. As usual more hours would add but its at a good point here.
LRGB 30 40 20 40 minutes FLI Proline 16803, Astrodon Gen 11 filters and Tak NJP mount at my dark site observatory at Bigga NSW where the wild goats and goannas roam and the occassional Kangaroo says hello.
http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/...17600/original
Here is a darker version of the same area with less background showing but better contrast:
http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/131722349
Here's a photo of the setup:
http://www.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/131718019/large
Greg.