SVAA Club Night 11 January

[Greenswale (Wren)]

Had a chat with Ken to see if the club night should happen, with fires in mind.

Outcome is that I will phone Ken at about 4.00pm Friday to determine yes or no.

I will post the result in this thread, a bit after 4.

[danielsun]

Unfortunately cant make it tonight but keen to get there for the Feb club night.

Cheers Daniel.

[Greenswale (Wren)]

Spoke with Ken. There is no current fire threat, so the club night can go ahead.

Seems that the cool change has arrived, and its a bit windy. Forecast suggests that the wind will drop, Sky Harbinger suggests clear skies into the early morning, Ken sees cloud in the distance.

Sooooo, I am about to load the car and head off a bit later, hoping for clear skies!

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Excellent Wren
I am coming up with the 20" in tow!

See you up there.

Malcolm

[Greenswale (Wren)]

What an excellent night!

Great sky, lots of meteors and that 20". Just brilliant.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Thanks for prompting us to get up there Wren! Those 3 hours or so of great skies were definitely worth the drive up.
One of the traps with a new scope is that your packing routine is all changed. I left home happy with lots of time to get there knowing I would have 30mins of twilight to collimate the beast, and 15mins down the road realised my truss poles were still sitting on the verandah!
Quick U turn back to home and then trying to beat the sunset up to Snake Valley.
Anyway, I think the collimation was a bit out but the views were all good.
The other prob with a bigger scope is all I want to do is try it out on old favourites. seeing the spiral arms of NGC1365 filling most of the field with the SN still just visible, the spirals in Dorado, and other sights made the trip special.
Then an hour or so of finding faint fuzzies with my 15x70s and Kens 80mm binos was fun.

Thanks again Ken, Ken and Wren for a great night!

Malcolm

[byronpaul (Paul)]

Guys, sounds like you had a great night.

I spent a few hours out last night with a lot of kids at the caravan park we are staying. Showed them a few of the easy targets as I only had my binos and WO66 ..... But they were still amazed. Having a 20" on hand would have been good.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Hi guys,
Decided to run up to Snake Valley last night for the Jan Club night as it looked like being pretty reasonable and Malcolm was turning up with his 20" and I just had to go to have a look through that.
Talk about last minute decisions, decided at at 7.00 PM was loaded and on the way by 7.40 got there by 8.40 was set up and ready by 9.00 all good.
Drift align and sync while it was getting dark, Malcolm Wren and Ken get setup as well and were away.
Can't get a good look at the Pleiades from home too many bloody trees in the way, I wonder who the silly bugger was that planted those

So image run going its time to go and annoy the others for a look through their scopes, Malcolm's 20" is outstanding, the amount of detail you can see in NGC253 as it fills the eye piece view.
Anyway time for a cuppa and all of a sudden the lights go out, the generator had over heated and and quit so that was the end of my imaging unfortunately as I hadn't brought all the stuff to run of battery as that was still at home as well.

After all that here is the result of 56 min of 4 min subs with darks stretched to the max because I didn't get enough time but that's life. I'm happy with what I got.
I've put this on my pbase Gallery as cutting it down too much for posting spoils it so follow the links below.

ED80 field flattener and Pentax K5D
http://m5.i.pbase.com/g2/57/714057/2...5.kk6L6yLn.jpg

Large version
http://m5.i.pbase.com/o6/57/714057/1...sSV110113b.jpg

[Greenswale (Wren)]

Noice Ken!

BUT, you should have been there last night!!! Brilliant seeing most of the time, very dark sky. Pinpoint stars all over, just fantastic.

Gonna be like that in March, I believe.....

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Lovely Ken. I spent about 4 hours imaging Pleiades at the camp in November. All of the data was corrupted, and to say the least, I was extremely disappointed - no idea what went West, concurrently with Pleiades.

I am really pleased that you managed this beautiful shot. If I get the opportunity again this year, I will be very happy indeed.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Beautiful image, Ken!