Just got back yesterday from a week on the NSW north coast - Grafton to be exact. Had wonderful weather, but did no real observing apart from an unsuccessful attempt to see the Moon occult Antares...
But I did spend a couple of days at the beach - Brooms Head and Minnie Waters - and gave the 20x80Ts a run at whale watching. The bees knees for the job... practically the veritable wasp's nipples! The whales were, I would estimate, roughly 8ks out (eye level about 3-4m above sea level and the whales on the horizon - does that sound about the right distance? I can't find a handy reference... There must be an old salt here who can convert that description to a distance!) but the 20x80s did a great job o bringing them close enough to make out detail!
While there I also took a few panoramas. Seaside panoramas are difficult to do due to the lack of fixed points on the horizon for alignment. These 3 look OK when reduced in size for the web, but if you look really closely you might be able to pick the alignment errors in 2 of them.
The first at Brooms Head is a 180 degree panorama with my partner Lyn doing some whale watching through the 20x80s. 7 images with the C5060WZ.
The second was taken from the headland at Minnie Waters. 6 images with the C5060WZ.
The last one is 4 images from the northern end of Minnie Waters Beach. The joins are perfect in the full size original on this one thanks to the land on the horizon.
All were assembled with autostitch, cropped and saved for the web with PS CS2.
Al.
(I just had to do it!)
). So, say, about 7-8 ks?...
