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Thanks everyone for making last night another memorable Kulnura experience.
It was great to make some new acquaintances, and I thoroughly enjoyed our chat around Rocket Boy's new "hot box". Great pizza, and beer, man! It is always a pleasure chatting, and sharing family stories and experiences.
Nice to see Joe and his family/friends, Jacob, Geoff (Owl) and Glenn Dawes for the first time. Also good to catch up with Daniel Berringer and talk about the WO crayford for SCT (which is an outstanding peice of equipment BTW).
As for observing, that was a bit of a downer for me last night. My LX200 make some disturbing hissing and gurgling sounds early on.....maybe it should not have had so much pizza.......Off to the workshop at Bintel, hopefully under warranty, and hopefully to be ready for SPSP14.
Still, I was able to use my scope as a push-to, and show Froggy that we Buzz-Clickers can manually find some objects too! I particularly enjoyed the views of Jupiter last night...first for the year for me. Also, Saturn held up to 295x for the second night in a row. Omega Centauri improved as it rose in the sky, and the view of M46 in John Bambury (Ausastronomer)'s scope was very sharp. H114 is becoming a real favourite of mine, so easy to find in the Milky Way glow halfway between Crux and the false cross. The Jewel Box is always a pleasing view.
John and I had a look at a few objects in the Orion Stratus 17mm. It was very sharp and contrasty on axis, only losing some sharpness in the peripheral 25% of the FOV. I was pleased with how it performed. Clouds drifting and variable seeing made the job of a detailed comparison with other similar focal length Ep's too difficult.
Our thoughts go with you H, as you head to the ACT. Best wishes, mate. There is a chance my family may be heading down that way in the next 6-9 months for a family break....if so I'll PM you, as we might be able to enjoy those dark Canberra skies one night?!
Louie, we all commented on how we missed you. Hope you are OK, and that we see soon.
I hope to see as many of you as possible at SPSP14. If not, maybe a session at 3rd quarter before, or 1st quarter after could happen? Let's see what the weather does, and whether a leave pass is at all obtainable....
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