Looking good here in Sydney too. Shame I have to go out tonight (as in somewhere other than the backyard). Celebrating a friends birthday so will have to see what shape I'm in when we get home.
Will definitely need the IIS beanie if I venture out late this evening.
The only problem for me is there's been a large fire south of town today, so there's a heavy plume of smoke across the horizon from South to East (probably across the Blue Mountains somewhere). Hopefully it will stay there and not blow back over me...
Interested to see some Jove shots from your LX200R, Kal.
I'm quite curious about this model/brand of scope as a planetary imager.
This is one of my captures of the night (@F25). It is 'as is' captured/stacked/processed by the LPI software. All I did was convert it from a TIFF to a JPEG.
Edit: Added an image of the straight wall as well - this one I touched up in photoshop a bit (contrast/sharpen)
Last edited by Kal; 26-05-2007 at 12:21 AM.
Reason: Added straight wall piccy
Hazy cloud for much of the night, but didn't stop me working around the favourites - limited by moonlight and melbourne's skyglow. Seeing seemed to be up and down, never great. Spent most time on the Moon - first real opportunity with my scope. Well, I cannot see the craterlets in Plato at first attempt - my maximum magnification is 266 - unless I hold the 9mm eyepiece steady out of the barlow and keep cranking the focuser in as I move it further from the OTA! Don't think it was designed for that procedure, but it was fun trying.
Seemed to aggravate my sore throat and runny nose which developed this morning (couple of days after the rest of the family). Lemsip and off to bed. Big day tomorrow - my dob base is going to join forces with Ebonystar!
Conditions were a bit variable from Point Clare last night. It wasn't still enought to hold 360x, so at 10.30pm, by which time it was registering 4.9 degrees, I headed indoors!
The only problem for me is there's been a large fire south of town today, so there's a heavy plume of smoke across the horizon from South to East (probably across the Blue Mountains somewhere). Hopefully it will stay there and not blow back over me...
Al.
Well after all that I didn't make it!
I knew I had to do the soccer training shuffle in the arvo so that would delay the setting up of the scope, that's OK. But after that I find out I'm cooking a BBQ... OK it just puts the observing back a bit more, it's Friday night, I can stay up late...
Then a mate calls and wants to borrow some camping stuff for the weekend. No probs... he turns up with food and booze. So I explain I'm on call so I have to be able to drive...
So I'm going 1 to 1 1/2 hours between drinks, but he's compensating for me and well and truly settled in, so once the girls went to bed, I thought it wise to throw a DVD on and provide some entertainment before he got really untidy...
Oh well, there'll be other nights... it was a pleasant enough evening anyway!
Some great photos above guys! Well done (someone's got to do it!)
Great images all , never made it out last night but I stuck my head out a few times and the sky looked pretty perfect as well as depressing because I wasn't out there . It's the same again today and I cleared all outstanding jobs so nothing will stop me tonight we are expecting a overnight drop down to 2ºc so that will help the viewing as well .