First off to Trevor (keltik) and cam, no problems, glad to help! Remember cam don't stress over collimation, an 8" f6 doesn't need to have too much time spent on it to get good views, concentrate on observing and learning the night skies.
Thanks to Ken and the crew again for a great but cloudy camp. After Nico's little demonstration on Friday night I will never look at a sheep the same way again. And who knew that it was possible to get 400 sheep to march in lockstep? Hope no one was upset by the slightly risqué jokes on Sat night/Sunday morning, thought I saw Doug blush a couple of times.
The bad news is that the sky here in Colac is beautiful tonight, so hopefully it is at SV as well
I just took my binos out for a quick look. In 10 mins nabbed M104, M83, Eta Car, Tarantula, M41, Cent A, Omega Cent, M65 M66, Saturn and Mars.
I too had a great night in with other fellow SV campers. The entertainment on Sat was top notch. To borrow a line from Fawlty Towers, "there is enough materials there for a whole conference..."
Thanks Ken for your hospitality once more, sorry I didn't see you before I drove off on Sunday.
Martin, your camera repair skills are far better than your food serving skills (and thanks for giving me a hand setting up ).
Jen, Cam and Ken, thanks to your kids also for keeping my kid occupied.
Bring on November.
Bo
The sky was clouded over completely till about 6pm with a slight open patch at the east so most were taken by surprise when it completely cleared by 7 or so.
The Fog rolled in around 8 but stayed low so there was plently of imaging and visual Obs happening.
Massive dew but the skies stayed clear till dawn.
The milky way was magnificent.
We also had some travellers who were keen on astronomy drop by.
Folk were great as usual, plenty of laughs.
I had a great time, and many thanks to Ken for organizing the camp.
Look forward to the next club night and the Nov Camp.
now to catch some sleep.
Probably should have taken leave from work and turned up. I did think of it. The sky is incredible out there. Had to head off early Sunday am for family things. Really wanted to return that night.
Well, another Snake Valley Astro Camp over and done with, what can one say, it was the usual fun, laughter and craziness as per normal.
Weather wasn't kind but we did get a good night in on Sunday night, lol to those who left Sunday, the remainder were clouded but that didn't stop the fun.
Saturday night feast was well and truly up to the usual standard with not one, but two Pav's for BigDave to drool over, first time I have ever seen a piece of pav left over, soooooo filling .
Highlights would have to have been the ongoing duel between Doug and Drew with buggy's at 30 paces. The usual gear problems, none for me I must say , the meeting of new friends and the ongoing relaxed atmoshere of this camp.
Finally got over the 8 hour drive home, looking forward to the November.
Big thanks to Ken and crew for putting on a fantastic camp, it was fantastic. It is always great to meet new people and exchange ideas. Already looking forward to November.
Sunday night was awesome, first time I've done a dusk till dawn session. Haven't had time to process the data yet, but here is a crop of single one minute shot, taken through a 50mm f1.4 lens.
I have just sat here for the last 20 minutes composing and typing my report. But because I am so tired, Instead of clicking send, I clicked the close icon in the top right corner of screen and lost the lot
I shall start again and hope I don't lost it all again
Well I haven't made it home yet. I'm down at Portland and spent today doing some blue water cruising chasing Blue fin tuna. Fish are still a bit scarce. I have another trip booked for Friday and then it's back home and back to work.
The camp was great fun as usual with Malcolm cracking everyone up with his jokes. Just getting over the sore ribs from laughing.
Thanks everyone for another great camp. Special thanks to Ken and the SV crew.
I can't remember everything I just typed before I lost the lot, but Sunday night and Monday nights were amazing!
I saw some great images by some from Saturday and Sunday nights
Due to the cloudy conditions, most people went to bed just after midnight on Monday night to get some sleep before their drive home on Tuesday.
But Jen and I saw some hope in the sky and waited just that bit longer, and . . . BINGO! The best seeing I have seen in about 3 years!
I was on the Clubs little 8" Dob and Jen was using her Johnny.
7mm EP's showed Saturn sitting absolutely dead still, with no sign of Atmospheric disturbances. Fantastic!
We did the usual tour of Globs in Scorpio, then onto Saggy for the Lagoon, Trifid, Swan, and Eagle Nebs.
Then, to test how good the sky was, we went and viewed Markarians Chain and some other galaxies throughout Virgo
As an example of how good the sky was on Sunday night, I showed a couple of people how to see Centaurus 'A' Galaxy naked eye. They saw it
Monday Night ended up even better.
But by 5am Tuesday I was too tired to keep observing so I left Jen to continue on her own.
After 5 months of not being able to use my Mallincam AstroVideo camera, John G accidentally solved the problem. It was in need of a driver, and in the act of trying Johns 'Plug-n-Play' cable instead of my disck-loaded driver, the whole thing finally worked
Only to have my mount die
Thanks to everyone that came along and made the camp fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves again.
Thanks to Martin (mill) for his help and support throughout the whole Camp, to RobK for his massive clean-up after the Feast, and to Dazza (Desler), Daniel, and all the others that pitched in to help clean up at the end of the camp.
See you all in November, if not before at a Club night
Thanks very much Ken for another great camp. It's all very much appreciated.
I don't have much to report being the passive participant that I am.
Malcolm's jokes have done the rounds at work here to much laughter. I have not even tried to imitate Nicko's demonstration of sheep 5 abreast in lock step walking down the road under the command of one dog and a farmer and not to mention the rest of it; couldn't possibly do it justice, no one else could.
Looking forward to November.....
Cheers all and thanks for making it a great weekend,
Well done Ken and Jen. Good to see someone managed some viewing. One of these days I'm going to be free on the Sanday of the Camp and apply for a 4 night leave pass, so I don't have to read any "you shoulda been here" posts!
No feet must be ya??? lol..Too funny! I agree with Malcolm the "you shouldve been here" kinda sux. Now Im a member of SVAA hopefully Nov will be kinder to us lol. Hope to make it down for a few club nights too. Again, thanks for making the lil ppl and I feel welcome and for the tips from everyone.
Well, I had an absolute ball as per usual. A huge thanks to everyone for the friendship, good humour and preparedness to help out in a crisis. Thanks to Ken and Martin for steering the ship so well and to all those who cleaned up on Tuesday (sorry I wasn't there to help).
Great to see some new faces and I never tire of seeing the old ones. I missed out on my processing lesson from Doug but I think we all enjoyed just kicking back - there's always time for the more serious stuff.
I had a rotten time with the mount on Sunday night. John G valliantly taught me Alignmaster only to have the mount point off any old where it wanted to. Then I had a crew, ablely lead by Darren trying to get drift aligning going. It did but again, the scope just went off and pointed whereever the hell it wanted. I had tried PhD several times during the night only to see the graph go haywire.
At 3:00am I gave up and went to get a coffee turning PhD on again just for the hell of it. I came back half an hour later to see the PhD graph flat lining! I can only assume it did a self-diagnosis and repair!
Worried that the mount won't slew to an object and that I had aligned using the guide scope not the main scope I decided to head to Trifid anyway.
(When I left for camp on the Friday all I had wanted was a pic of the Trifid.)
Lo and behold there it was smack bang in the middle of the imaging scope!!! After frigging around imaging without the guiding running, pushing it a little to the left to avoid the amp glow I managed to get one 6 minute image and one 10 minute image. By that time the sun was almost up so I snapped a 6min dark and a 10min dark and then headed to bed.
Dramas back in town meant I had to leave on the Monday so missed yet another Monday night (...one of these days...)
A BIG thank you to everyone attending the camp.
It was funny as hell again and there was good company around and lots of laughter.
Sunday night was the best clear night and everyone was imaging or doing visual.
As usual some people had problems with their equipment but this was solved quickly with a hammer and chisel
I made 3 images on Sunday night and they will be posted in the imaging section.
(and thanks for giving me a hand setting up 
). 
