Hi All,
in my totally inexpert opinion, the seeing in Perth these past few nights has been fantastic - apart from the moon glow that is
However, we have an Italian student (young lady) over (er, from Italy) for a couple of months and another of their group a young chap was visiting us also last night. So, as it was a clear night again, I decided to get the 12" LB out and see if we could impress them with views of Jupiter and the moon.
We started out with a fairly low power ep which left them both gasping at the views of the moon, but rather less so at the view of Jupe. Whilst Jupe was crystal clear, it did seem in bit small and unimpressive in the 26mm ep.
So, I got out the Stellarvue binoviewers and stuck them in. These are always absolutely breath-takingly awesome, and really make the moon seem like you could take a step forward and climb into one of the craters. This view left my visitors gasping and wowing and goo-ing for quite some time. And Jupiter came to life too in the bv's with the bands clearly visible and the disc a good size. Surprisingly, they were quite surprised to see that things 'moved' across the fov - I guess they've never really seen the effects of the Earth's rotation so 'close-up'. And we were lucky enough to see one of the moons come right over the horizon while we watched.
We tried to spy Neptune as it's just below Jupiter, but although we could see a couple of feint light sources, there wasn't anything to indicate we were seeing Neptune. But of the few targets we were able to see, we saw with a huge wow factor and it left our visitors with a memory that I feel sure will live with them for a long time. The young (Italian) lad even thought to take a few snaps with his point and click camera - just thru the ep - which turned out annoyingly good, as none of my meagre attempts have ever been recognisable as heavenly objects
All in all, a great night, and if we're lucky enough to have more clear nights, I feel sure I'll asked to get the gear out again.
Cheers all,
