Well what an astrofest – I am officially stuffed, and typing this from a motel in Ballana NSW on my way home after what I can say what the most perfect 10 days ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have it on very good authority that sleep deprivation does lead to incoherent conversation – I was a babbling idiot at 1.20am on Friday morning – after a whole week of all nighters – dusk till 530-6am every day.
The sky – crystal – the seeing – brilliant to not bad, but I was tracking the sky quality all week with a SQM meter. Averaging 21.7-21.9, but the last three nights the meter went off the chart - -22.32!!! simply brilliant.
The last night I stayed up until 2am – then the fog was starting to roll in – thank goodness or I would have kept going.
The food – well that was to die for
- if you were there you would know – nuff said
now on to more pressing matters – the eq8!!!!!!! simply saying this - IT IS BLOODY UNREAL!!!
First night – rms of 0.02 – this was witnessed by several people. Weeks average was 0.06 – 0.11 with the exception for Thursday as the seeing week pear shape for a short while and the rms was 0.33.
simply put between the brains of Grahame and myself we worked out the two star alignment procedure and then adjusted the offset to find the SCP – two iterations for me and it was done – I never touched it for the rest of the week. But – and there is a big but – I hate the pier – its a mongrel to setup and level – but in saying that its very stable.
I will add more later – heaps of photos and I haven’t processed a single image, but judging from the quality of the images I saw being captured by some others, simply awesome.
As for the skyaction – there were heaps of meteors – one in particular that not only had a bright white blue colour but also left a vapour trail and was audible.
But the milky way – it was breathtaking to see in all its glory from north to south.
In all it was great to catch up with everyone.
...
ah Houghy....
