A Fun Saturday night at the Mapleton Observatory was had by
Adrian (one of the guardians of the observatory),
Mark (Mhodson)lockyer Valley QLD
Paul (1Ponders)Sunshine Coast QLD
Ian (Gaa Ian) from the N.T.
Tony (Striker) Brisbane QLD
Andrew (Comet Hunter) Ipswich QLD.
Mapleton is on top Queensland's Sunshine coast hinterland and the Observatory is situated with in the School grounds and offers dark sky's except for a few bothersome street lights .
The get together started out with the usual setting up of all the instruments before sunset and a casual getting to know each other along with all the sharing of information on where to get this and that , and how to do's.
The scopes included an 8 and 10" Meade SCT a 4" Astroscan and a Celestron 105mm Mak plus the Observatories 11" SCT on a Losmandy mount.
The weather played a big part in the way the night ran and produced some , lets say interesting innovations on the night.
The night started out quite clear and early observing was good.
We had a green laser pointer shoot out at first to compare outputs.
That being said if your in the market for one don't trust those claims of high outputs untill you try them aginst another known output.
But the cloud gods were playing a bad joke on us this night .
In they came , not a total cover just big patches of fast moving cloud with moments of clear sky.
stargaze:
Then there was the Dew, and do I mean there was dew.
Things started getting pretty wet soon after sunset but within an hour all scopes and anything laying around was covered in a heavy dew.
The result was to cover every thing up and hope it would clear enough for the next clear patch of sky.
So into the covered observatory for a look through the un dewed Celestron, then back out for a try on the other scopes again and then back into the observatory.
This is how the night progressed.
The highlight of the night was not an object viewed but the ideas that were springing to mind of those present on how to clear those troublesome corrector plates.
This had Paul using a laptop in a way the makers would never have envisaged.
(see Picture) . This produced limited and slow results needless to say , but did eventually allow him to run a few Avi's with his new ToUcam 840 . I think he has already posted them and they turned out quite well considering the handicaps he had on the night.
Objects view were few due to the clouds , dew and the moon being present.
Target objects were Saturn , Jupiter the Moon and M42 , but I think the night wasn't so much about a serious night of imaging and viewing but more of a get together to put a face to the names on the forum and I hope that other forum members can do like wise with people in there own areas.
Don't forget to post any invitations on the forum as you never know who will be in the area on the night.(Ian from the NT).
I thoroughly enjoyed the night and hope to catch up with the guys again in the future for another and larger get together.
Also I want to thank Paul and Adrian from the Mapleton Observatory for the use of the Observatory and the grounds for the night
Mark (mhodson)
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
Man was it bright. Way way brighter than venus. As I said I thought it was a *very* bright plane reflecting off the just set sun.
- never looked through a wideangle piece before, was great, thanks Ian! 
