After a long wait, we had clear skies for one night over Victoria last night. So I took today off and spent last night with my Dob near 90 mile beach. Just got back.
Had an awesome time! Thanks to all who responded on this thread for helping me get started.
This is what I managed to find:
Omega Centauri & 47 Tucanae I already checked out from my back yard. Much better this time without the light pollution. ditto m42. Dark skies really up the wow factor for these objects!
Things I saw for the first time:
Eta carina & tarantula nebula. Not only these objects themselves but also the areas of the sky they're in are astonishing. I spent ages looking at and around these two.
ngc5128 -- yes Andrew, I saw the hamburger!
m83 --- core clearly stands out, but no structure (no hint of spiral arms)
m104 --- faint but there, not much structure
n3918 --- blue planetary did show hint of blue, but maybe I imagined it because it was very faint. I lost it when I upped the magnification.
I looked and looked for ngc3132 but could not find it. Maybe it's too faint.
By the end of the night I got much better at star hopping. Initially I found it really difficult, because the scope shows so many more stars than the charts I printed do (with all stars to mag 10). Eventually, I worked out thja I could rehearse the star-hop journey from a bright star to target with the binos before attempting it with the Dob. The $26 I spent on a 2nd hand 7x50 was well worth it. (The Andrews 10x32 "bonus" binos are not so useful. Too much magn., too little aperture.)
Finally, Jupiter was the best I've ever seen it. At 300x it was just starting to show a little atmospheric shimmer. Really need tracking at 300x though. Saw the GRS for the first time this morning.
Was out till 5:30am. The thought of sleep had not crossed my mind all night. It hit me after I packed up and started driving. I had to struggle to keep my eyes open to make it back to my accommodation some 5kms from the site. Slept till early a/noon.
