It was absolutely brilliant! It was crystal clear from about 6:30PM till when we left at about 12:30 AM. No signs of clouds when we were leaving either. Cold as hell but.
It's an incredibly dark site. Darkest I've had the pleasure to date to set up a telescope at. Good view of the north too. Saw some targets I haven't seen before. M13, M57, Lyra double-double for example. I can't recall the last time I saw the Milky Way as brilliant as it was last night.
Even did some eyepiece comparisons with Duncan's 13mm ethos and my ES 14mm in both our scopes.
Definetly going back to that lookout. Might bring an extra jumper though.
I must have said it over a hundred times last night, so I'm not going to shy away from it again W O W !!!
Absolutely brilliant night out, great to meet the guys, thanks for being so welcoming! There's just so many things imprinted on my memory at the moment it's hard to sift through all the mental images!
The weather was good, mostly still with a light breeze early and late in the evening, but it left us alone most of the night. Next time I'll be bringing my heated vest for sure oh and an extra pair of socks. The site is interesting - next time I must get there before sun down - with the only real blight being a little direct light pollution (streetlamps?) to the east. A couple of random trees didn't really detract much from what would otherwise be a good all around view.
After I'd sorted out the (mis)alignment between my finder and the scope itself (I need to get another Rigel baseplate), and figured out how to convince it that it was in the southern hemisphere, I then discovered that my diagonal was fouling the mount base and confusing the computer. Once I worked that out, it behaved itself all night and then ... under the instruction of my tour guides ... boy did I see some amazing sights last night the little C8 did not disappoint!
The Milky Way itself... I was constantly in awe of it, I reckon I must have spent as much time looking up at it naked eye as I did looking at objects through the eyepiece. Words cannot describe... but it must have been pretty dark there to see what we could see, either that or I'm just not used to seeing the real thing
Hehe congratulations Dunk, it's dark, can be bortle 2 to the west, south and overhead... I know you don't really get that in the UK now, too much light pollution...
What a great night, it really was amazing considering how the weather was in Sydney when I decided to go. Thanks again Adrian for lending me those two ES eyepieces. Nice meeting you Duncan, was special to see someone from the northern hemisphere experience our southern skies for the first time at such a dark location! Had a good time light painting and experimenting with exposure settings with Ed as well.
Like Duncan said, I too spent a lot of time just looking at the Milky Way itself. But the views through the scopes there were just "out of this world". Pun intended! You could just move the scope around anywhere and literally see countless galaxies popping into the field of view it was that dark.
Like Adrian said, I too enjoyed the views of some northern hemisphere objects that I would not normally have tried if not for Duncan. The Ring Nebula and Dumbbell are imprinted in my mind.
Hehe congratulations Dunk, it's dark, can be bortle 2 to the west, south and overhead... I know you don't really get that in the UK now, too much light pollution...
Where I used to live...probably bortle 8, but an hour or so of driving southwest would get me to a 4, maybe 3 site (hard to tell from the descriptions on wikipedia). There are also a limited number of dark sky reserves, in more remote locations (relatively!)... in a country only a little over half the area of the state of Victoria, there are almost 55 million people crammed in, so remote has a different meaning Of course, the bigger problem is the weather... can't see anything through the clouds
Anyway, how great is it to have such darkness on our doorstep here, using the term relatively again
I must say, we lucked out. The skies was absolutely clear by 7pm. The location was fantastic, minus the cold and a bit of eastern glow.
Saw a lot of amazing globs and nebulas i havent seen before, some of it really sticks to you. Been using google image this morning to add the colours in my head.
Also glad to have Duncan join us from the north and tell us how different it is up there.
Heres some photos i took (Check my flickr for full quality, so much quality loss here)
1) Hargraves lookout
2) Facing south westernly (Jason on the foreground)
3) Facing south
4) Random high flyer that decided to say hello
5) Milky way
6) Milky way with nasty sky glow
7) Adrians dob
8) Warp speed to milky way
Looks like you guys had a great night!
I think we gave up on the weather too soon up Central Coast way.
Looks tempting !!!
What are the facilities like there?
Do you have room for a few more scopes?
Oh, and what were the conditions like?
We got buckets of dew up here!
Dew is rare. Hargraves, Mt Blackheath & Katoomba Airfield are all above the surrounding valleys. No rich, moist farmland & pastures. Just dry rocky ridge tops. Driving home from the Airfield I've often come across dew & fog from Katoomba onwards, but the Airfield was crystal clear.
All of these three site have ample room. However, the Airfield is private land, with loos, an office with a combustion heater to meet & sleep in, & the safety private property offers. Hargraves is darker, but soooo much colder (as the boys found out), & you need to lug your gear from the car park to the observing site some 25m away.
Last edited by mental4astro; 11-06-2013 at 08:17 AM.
Actually forgot about the time lapse I did. Just processed it then and added some music. Wish it was longer. https://vimeo.com/68259150
If I had the time I would go through each frame and process them individually.
Yeah longer exposures on a mount would be nice to have, I wouldn't mind sticking my 50mm on and getting some nice wide field shots through that. Just a lot of effort to bring my EQ6 out! Guess that's where the Polarie wins.
W O W !!!
the little C8 did not disappoint!
