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What a lovely clear and still night. Yes, there was heavy dew by the end of the night, which required some drying time on Sunday, but wow, some of the objects we looked at at 400x were superb.
I have never seen Saturn so clearly and well resolved. It was superb.
The skies are not quite dark enough at the Pony Club to do justice to the galaxy clusters I had in mind, but we had some good views of various individual galaxies, globular clusters and planetaries.
Shame you couldn't join us, Norm :-(
It was great to have Gary K, Andrew Murrell and John Bambury join us for the first time in a while, great company guys! Gary explained to me why Stanley Kubrick was such a fine movie director, disecting 2001 A Space Odyssey for me. I will look out next time for all the references to birth and birthdays; I am looking forward to seeing Dr Strangelove (thanks Gary!).
Mai's sister's boyfriend was in tow, from the UK; he appeared to be a little overwhelmed with all the asrronomical info...I guess there is a limit to how much you can soak up in one night!!
AND.....what a fantastic surprise to see (and smell the stogies of) Rocket Boy! So glad you are OK, mate, I was a bit concerned when we hadn't seen or heard from you for a while.
Phil T is always great company, cheers buddy for your companionship, and also some funny chit chat with Joe put a smile on my dial! Also great to chat with Greg during the course of the evening.
Great to see Rick, Geoff (Kombi) and Allan too, although my hands were a bit too full to catch up with you guys properly - hopefully next time I am at the PC we can catch up properly.
It would seem that we are all very devoted to our mothers....I was the last one out, and locked the gate at about 12.15am. Very strange, as the sky was looking clear as a bell (having clouded up a bit in the previous hour or so).
I will be in Paris at the time of next new moon, seeing the sky upside down. I will try to keep you in the loop as I travel around France, and I look forward to seeing everyone in July.
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