I had the great pleasure of getting out to Leyburn's dark sky site (thanks Mark for hosting us, very nice of you!) with Andrew (Astro_South). I had a great time observing through the dobs there, they were AWESOME!!! I'm now officially "dobsmacked"!!!
A big thanks to Andrew for offering to give me a lift up there and fitting all my gear in his car (well, all my gear except for the doh moment!). Another big thank you to Andrew for being a great guy and showing me lots of different things and explaining things to me. Of course, a big thank you for showing me so many different and very cool objects. Wow is all I can say! It was all very much appreciated, and highly enjoyed by this lad.
I'm not sure if the other guys are on IIS - Kevin (16" dob), Glenn (10" newt), Mal and his son on a Celestron C9.25 using a very smart Bluetooth setup, Julian with his awesome Meade 10" SCT and home made spectometer (I think I spelt that right), Michael (8" Newt + EQ6PRO), Mark - thanks for helping show me how to spot Octans - it's a doddle when you're shown by the experienced guys, Nolene and her husband Graham - enjoyed the macro chat Nolene! A big thanks to everyone for being not only so nice, but helpful and patient with me. I had a grand time
I got to see lots of objects and was frequently blown away. Those dobs sure do have some wow factor, don't they? I was also blown away by Kev's Argo Navis - that is one seriously cool piece of gear, it's awesome. Thanks Ken for taking so much of your time to show me so many wonderful objects, the vast majority I'd never seen before.
Now onto the "doh" moments, of which I had 2 of them:
1) forgetting the tripod for my EQ6PRO mount. I saw the funny side of it all, and had a good laugh. I was lucky Andrew had a spare CG5 mount, so I got some viewing in on Friday with my 4" refractor. Those big dobs drew me in like a moth to light though...
2) I bought some simple fare for food for the weekend - loaf of bread, small tub of vegemite and a tub of butter. Well, silly me left it in the tent. Said butter melted, and as murphy's law would have it, the lid came off. And, as O'Toole's law would say, there was a hole in the plastic bag that it was all in. Needless to say, molten butter over the tent floor, and worse, the air mattress that I was using, was not fun to clean up. A big thank you to Michael for "lending" me some hand towels to clean up the mess. No permanent damage done ;-)
A big thank you to mother nature for such wonderful skies. Yes, I know that the experienced observers considered it only average, but wow, from the suburbia of Ipswich, they were pretty damn cool skies.
Thanks everyone for a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.
Dave
