Having a ball with my 12" Dob at Eagleview tonight
, there has been a bit of transient cloud at times but it has been mostly clear all night, pretty nippy, at 2am it is about -4C but low humidity and a light variable breeze, so a light frost has formed on everything but dew hasn't been a problem and eyepieces have stayed clear. All the classics look excellent in the eyepiece (M104, M17, M20, Omega etc..) with excellent transparency and contrast. Once again two stars were visible in The Coal Sack and Acrux was sharply split. I had the 12" Dob at 750X magnification on Jupiter without much image degradation
and I watched the shadow of one of the moons transit. At this power the disc of Jupiter was huge, all the Galilean moons were clear discs and plenty of nicely coloured bands and festoons were visible on the planet's disc. While the seeing certainly looked reasonably good and yes, I have seen better, this is only the first ever viewing session from Eagleviee so I was a little nervous...but Ive seen enough so far (previously naked eye and now through a good scope) to say I am confident that Eagleview will perform in the seeing department, it is very dark and has good transparency
..given site testing is impossible when buying a property such as this, the above is all somewhat of a relief really, phew
Mike