great pictures wombat!!! thanks for catching paul and i in the act of doing a drug deal.
sorry matt, i forgot my socks to go with my sandals!
birds scope, i saw it heaps, but it never fails to stop me in my tracks. It is like being at a nudist camp with john holmes!!!
the workings of birds cooling and scope are immaculate and so well done. In feeling sorry for my attempt at cooling, bird kindly donated his old cooling system to me.
top bloke is young bird. tutorials on registax,letting people play with his scope at any time, helping me focus my scope etc etc.
dave47tuc and his knowledge of the sky had us enthralled - awesome!!
wombat with his toolbox of goodies to help me with the soldering of my focusser and the desoldering of my fingers!!!
wombat and ken running around like little boys with their first leggo set. had to be there, but watching these guys dream up stuff was so funny!!
little dragon for helping me do the sauces.
great to catch up face to face with rumples and exfso (old fart - grumpy bum!!!) and chew the fat. great scopes guys, thanks for letting me play!
and everyone else for being there. great atmosphere with great mates!!
Just got back, stopped last night in Albury to break the drive up a bit. Was another great weekend, met some more new faces including Paul(rumples) and Ian(photon), Jodie(twokids) and others - and caught up again with the familiar faces from last time.
The weather Friday night was clear but windy, and I had some trouble with the wind so on saturday I moved into the courtyard around the cabins and had a much better time of it. The seeing on Sunday morning at about 4am was terrific, the best views I've had so far with the new scope. Fog and high haze made things a bit difficult but I should have at least one good run, maybe more.
Many thanks to Dave47tuc and DaveP for making this another memorable weekend!
Snake Valley was good fun again & compared to what I've been having down on the south coast, the seeing was great.Saw a fantastic fireball very early sunday morning & with the LX200 in 'guided tour' mode,got great views of many parts of the sky.Centaurus A was outstanding on sunday morning about 1am.Thanks to all who were there, another friendly get together & thanks Paul for the good oil on ccd cleaning & the 3d counterweights work like a charm.
Ive attached 2 montages.See you there again.
Great collages Robin! Thanks! I reckon these are much more interesting than pre-organised group shots ... if you can make one with everyone in it that is.
The two best night for me ever!
As dave said at the camp I fell in love with Tak at the camp (not much else to sleep with I guess...well, steve was in the same room but I preferred the Tak). I spent about 45mins on friday night staring at a superb wide view of the carina neb. Still dumbfounded.
Couldn't tell the difference between the 5" Astrophysics and the 5" Tak. But didn't really expect to, you would need a month with each scope I reckon.
By 2:30am on saturday a few of us were stuffed, so packed up, and sat in the field watching meteors. Good stuff. Thanks Dave47.
Thanks a lot Stu & Steve.Yep, love montages & love endless pics of people & their scopes.What a fun time although Im always in a pickle debating wether or not to 1.set up scope in evening then go to bed till 2am...or 2.Just stay up all night in case i miss something spectacular! Stayed up most of fri nite till 4.45am then went to bed sunday morning at 2.30 for a 4 o'clock rise & imaging session but due to dew, my scope was dripping buckets of water & no more observing.
Brilliant stuff there Robin!!
I liked how you threw in all the different state no. plates and the shot of your scope with the background night sky is fantastic!!
Well done!!!!
Thanks Daniel, good onya mate.Yeah, there i was on SCT hill overlooking the valley of the dobs & waiting for the seeing to improve & decided to do some tripod mounted time exposures of the night sky.I like doing montages & the licence plates from 4 states shows that the weekend was not huge in attendance numbers but people came from far and wide to make it a fantastic success.Quality not quantity.Mind you 20+ astronomers in one spot is a great turn out by any standards.
By the way, if any people want a high res version of any of those pics, PM me your email address with a description of the pic & I'll send them to you.
Heres just a few pics. Many more to come!
pic 1 left to right. Ian photon, Paul Rumples,Dave 47 tuc and Julian.
pic2 ken ballarat dragons and darren wombat in space.
pic3 Jodie and Cloe.
Thats a crack up Dave!!! Its funny isnt it when you see pics of your self posted on the forum...you think "...geez,is that me????"....have to confess, Im looking like a swamp monster in every shot!.....maybe its why our hobby is a night time one!
