Observing night at astroRon's place Sat 29th July

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Well I couldn't make it to Ron's but I'm out in my backyard trying to make the most of this absolutely gloriously clear, 1/10 seeing night. I may get lucky and jag a semi-decent Jupiter, but I doubt it

[Nordo]

Well, I'm back from Ron's.
Had a great night (First Light for the dob AND me ).
Saw heaps of clusters, nebulas, and other sexy things.
My next purchase won't be a TV eyepiece, it won't be a Telrad, it won't even be a red laser torch or a green laser pointer .
It's going to be WARM CLOTHES - especially better footwear and some gloves.
I was told how bad a wobbly tripod could be, but being cold for long periods of time when your trying to enjoy yourself must rate a close second (actually I think I would prefer a wobbly tripod ).
I would like to thank Ron very much for his hospitality, and both Ron and Steve for their help in pointing out objects to look at ("John, that's Jupiter - not Venus ").
Thanks again guys. Even though I froze, I had a great time .

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Long singlets, Long Johns, those funny little gloves with the fingers cut off, a good quality beanie or better yet a fleecey lined jacket with a hood. Ugh boots are great but get them with a good solid tread (and wear thick socks with the Ughies). Plus a hair drier.

Why?

To stick up inside your jumper or down the front of your pants or into your ugh boots for those REALLY frosty nights. It was a godsend out at Duckadang at 3 am.

[astroron (Ron)]

Thanks Nordo, I am glad you enjoyed yourself,I had another all nighter last night, 03:00 to follow the 04:00 the night before.
If you would have asked I could have lent you a freezer suit and gloves and a beenie
You could order some warm clothing from the forum buy swap and sell, I am getting some boots , the prices seem quite reasonable

[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

I know this is a bit late but it's been a strangely busy week for me - so here's a bit of a report of last weeks shenanigans .... um, I mean - an observing report.

Well, for a start it was a big crowd ..... Ron himself of course, John (Nordo) for his first trip, and my brother Don and myself were there. Huge crowd

John arrived with his brand new scope which we quickly gave a small tweaking using a laser collimator, it was prettty close actually to start with.

Right as twilight set in we went inside to organise some food, quick chat, etc, and came out after to see a brilliantly cloudless night, which looked even better considering the few nights solid cloud that we'd had during the week (and nights since have been mostly cloudy again).

Seeing, however, was poor - very poor early in the evening. Lots of high level seething with plenty of fine moisture apparenty as well.

That didn't matter, we had a new dob owner experiencing first light and I had a new ep to try, and Don was having his first workout with my little ETX70. Oh yes, Ron had a new 2" barlow as well, so as long as we could see stars nothing was going to stop us at all.

John did a bit of a tour of some of the "pretty pictures" as Ron calls his tour of the skies, but he also tracked down and located some not quite so basic objects, thanks to a little guiding by laser.

Don also had his 35mm camera set up to try and capture as many meteor trails as possible duing the night, and there were plenty to capture obviously with 3-4 separae streams all running reasonably well. On more than a couple of occasions someone would aim a laser up and start to say "just here..." only to have a meteor flare up just near where the pointer was aiming at. Makes you feel kind of god-like actually to be able to summon meteors from deep space that way.

Anyway I did a bit of touring around early on, more or less in parallel with John, looking at some interesting objects such as M57 (the Ring Nebula) which looked great in the 8mm Stratus ep; M6 (Butterfly Cluster); two of my favourites the Jewel Box and the Gem Cluster (NGC 4755 & 3293 respectively); Jupiter of course; & Rons favourite galaxy: NGC253 in Sculptor.

I then moved on to my grand viewing plan for the night: armed with star charts marked up specially I had decided to track down and log a total of 56 globular clusters, starting obviously with Omega Centauri and then working "west" as the sky rotated across to suit my viewing angle. I observed (in Centaurus) Omega Cent NGC5139 (and the conveniently nearby Centaurus A Galaxy NGC5128) and resumed my glob cluster search with NGC5286; panned south to Musca and viewed NGC4833 & 4372; north again to Hydra and viewed M68 and "up" (west) to NGC5694; a little further south and west into Lupus to view NGC5834, 5986 & 5927 and the very nearby 5946 in Norma; north again to NGC 5807 in Libra.

I swung away at this point to view Tuc47 and spent some time observing other areas of interest in the Small Magellanic Cloud as it had risen from behind a tree to provide me a good viewing angle point.

Aiming my scope back in the Antares region I took the oppportunity to view M4 and NGC6144, then moved on to M80, crossing from Scorpius into Ophiuchus M107 and further north to M12, M10, NGC6366 and M14.

Back into Scorpius: NGC6139, 6388, 6496, 6541, 6352 & 6397.

During this time we had all been having serious fogging of secondary's, etc so the hair dryer was pulled in and out of the shed several times. My grand viewing plan more or less ground to a halt at this point, some general naked eye meteor watching took place, followed by a stretch inside enjoying a cuppa and some biscuits.

The fog continued to rise up from the nearby river, receded again, rose further, etc. Don had gone to bed around 2 I think, John packed up and left around 3 to 3:30, Ron and I played hopefuls for a bit longer and packed it in.

One thing I was pleased about - first light for my scope was April 1st this year, and at that stage the Pleaides was already setting too soon to be seen. Before going to bed Saturday night they had risen and were low in the NE sky, so for the first time I was able to observe this lovely group with something other than my 1:1 ratio naked eyes.

[drmorbius (Randall)]

Great report Steve, sounds like a great night... sorry I missed it. Looking forward to next new moon.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

I enjoyed your report as well. Made me feel as if I had been there myself. Which hopefully I will be next new moon.