Other Sydner-siders will probably be jumping up and down just as I was last night.. the first clear night in over a month.. I kid you not!
The conditions weren't ideal though, last night although the sky was clear, the wind was fierce and gusty, which meant seeing conditions were terrible, it even wobbled my poor OTA about.
I found I had to remove one of the plastic washers to let the base sit flatter, it was just wobbling around too much.
Anyway while the moon was up, I toko the opportunity to set up the ToUcam and attempt my first lunar imaging with the ToUcam. I'm not expecting great results though, you should've seen the darn thing swimming about in the view. Conditions were horrible.
So I gave up the imaging and decided it was time to find that dirty snowball Maccholz. I knew it was somewhere near Orion and scanned for a while with my 11x70's, but couldn't find it. I mean the sky is a pretty big place and I could've been looking in completely the wrong direction.
So I went inside and jumped on the computer to look up some charts, I was nowhere near it
So armed with knowledge this time, it was a quick enough process to find it the 2nd time around, almost directly overhead! Through the binoculars it looked like a bigger Omega Centauri, a bright core with wispy looking haze surrounding.
I pointed the telescope at it, and with my 32mm and 15mm eyepieces took in some different views of it. No real tail was evident, just a haze surrounding the brighter core.
I looked for it naked eye, and I could *barely* make out a patch of sky that I think was it, but my skies weren't dark enough to truly make it out.
I finished up with a passing glance at M42, how can you not just have a quick look, it looked fantastic as always, in the 32mm it looked like it had wings stretching right out to the edge of the FOV.
I got up early this morning (1:30am) to do more imaging, and my god the sky was beautiful. Dark, clear and calm. Seeing was very good. The summer milky way looked georgeous stretching from south to north, saw my first view of Crux for many months and just made out Omega Centauri naked eye as it was hiding near the street light out the front.
I did some imaging of Saturn, results have to be processed and will be posted later.. i'm fairly confident though, the seeing was the best i've imaged in and the raw videos look tonnes better than my previous ones.
As I was looking through the finderscope aligning on Saturn, on 2 separate occassions a Geminid streaked through my view. Pretty cool
Anyway it was a great night, I hope other Easterners took advantage of the great conditions, it's been a long wait!
Rejoice with me! Last night was clear!
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
trying to ToUcam the moon. It was a bit like looking along a beach in the middle of summer, just a bit bumpy. But got to play with all his great lenses.
. And yep it is naked eye in fairly dark skys. (with a bit of averted vision
)
, I quickly checked the sky chart for comet macholz on sky&telescope's website and ran outside with the binos. It was directly overhead at 10:30pm. My neck was really craning so I decided to lay down on the concrete driveway, which also helped to block the streetlight 
I scanned a bit past rigel and there it was, a faint little fuzzball! Despite its faintness, I could imagine there was some kind of tail...but my skies here in the western suburbs are rife with so much sky glow that alas, I did not see one. Nor was I able to make it out with the naked eye, and I was even fortunate enough not to have any wind or haze. Just a quiet, mocking calmness in the air, and the very incredibly hungry mosquitoes. I also had a quick look at M42, it just cannot be helped! After that, I went to bed and fell asleep scratching my right leg and toes.
that explains the heavy cloud
