Have a great time Guys, I will be following your reports on my travels, we leave Queensland today, and it has been fantastic to date.
Hello Leon,
I met up with your sister Fran at Nicole Phelps wedding on the weekend. Her and Alan asked me to pass on their best wishes to you and Alice.
thankyou everyone for making Quinn and I feel so welcome on saturday.
I'm so glad i managed to make it, i had an absolute ball and learned so much from everyone not to mention it was heaps of fun. I will definatly be making the next one for sure and for any other beginnners out there contemplating going to an astronomy camp, don't hesitate, they are great fun. My only regret is that i missed seeing jen in the jammies flippers and goggles, alas i was too late. Oh well theres always next time.
Thanks again everyone for your help and friendship.
What a great astro camp Snake Valley puts on! I love this gathering more each time I go. Great people and great atmosphere. It was so good to catch up with the regulars that I already know and to meet some lovely newcomers to the camp. Some great viewing on Friday night and some cloud dodging on Saturday, but some great fun gasbagging in between frantically picking up favourite DSOs between the clouds. And plenty of noise and laughs around the imaging section in the quite bits. Seemed to hear quite a bit of Jen and Doug....
And despite the unseemly incident on my arrival, I am allowed to bring Roma to the next camp. My beloved politely suggested to me that I might clean the insects off quickly before they dried out.
Highlights for me were:
A full day of solar observing with 3 scopes - Michael's PST, Chris' TV refractor with Baader film and my ED 80 with Lunt Ha filter. It was fascinating to see what each different scope would bring out and to watch the constantly changing prominences and a new active region develop during the day.
Viewing through Alex's spectacular 22" SDM
Admiring Alistair's home built fork mount and the movements on Chris' new home built 10" dob
Shane Jacobsen's music
Laughing and talking lots with some really great people.
Thanks to Richard and Malcolm for trying my SMC charts.
And thanks heaps to Ken and the Snake Valley crowd for another fantastic weekend. Looking forward to March!
Thanks for the mention patrick and everyone's help. Was enlightening to say the least.
It was an amazing experience for me as it was my first, and will not miss one again. All you guys were so amazing and thats what made it even better.
Thanks Ken for a great camp.
Being a newbie, am still amazed at how well you'll know the constellations, NGC numbers and objects and whats where!
Looks like fun, i'll have to try and make it to the next one. Im the biggest newbie at the moment, so hopefully by the time the next one rolls around i'll have a bit more knowledge of things. Some of those scopes very nice.