Well, we landed in Sydney last Friday night. Internet access has been spotty at best. Drove up to Coonabarabran on Saturday. We've been clouded out most every night except Tuesday. We made the most of it that night. We have two 18" Obsessions, a 25" Obsession, one of the new Obsession 18" UC scopes, a 17.5" homebuilt and a 12" GSO. All of the Obsessions except the 18" UC have Argo Navis and Servocat drives. All the other scopes have Argo Navis. We pretty much left the choice of objects up to the Aussies with us and just went from one scope to the other all night.
The Aussies that are hosting us are Gary Kopf (Argo Navis), John Bambury, Andrew Murrell, and two fellows named Monty and Tom. Tom is a brother in law to Tony Buckley. The Yanks are all pretty much unknown except for Dave Kriege of Obsession Telescopes.
On Wednesday we had a guided tour of Siding Springs by Steven Lee. We had lunch with him and Rob McNaught. Great time. Last night was clouded out again, but tonight, Thursday, it's supposed to clear up. Some of us are leaving Coona tomorrow, the rest on Saturday. The wife and I will head to Sydney tomorrow.
Welcome to Australia – glad you all arrived safe and sound, but so sorry to hear of the lousy weather. Hope you manage to have a great time, both astronomy related and tourism wise.
It looks like our hosts are looking after you – they are a great bunch of guys.
Reminds me of some pilot mates of mine who booked a hold in a Qantas plane to go to Oshkosh to a fly in.
All those scopes must get close to that!
During the fly in the Qantas 747 did a very low dirty (gear down) pass, it was on all the news channels. This was at least twenty plus years ago.
Enjoy what this great clear sky country has to offer.
