Well finally Patrick!
We convinced you to sign up.
I don't know if this is your first post or not but if it is Welcome!.
Sorry you can't come to the star party.See ya next meeting
- frogman (anthony) with his 12" dob
- Rodstar (rod) with his 10" LX200
- h0ughy (david) with his 12" LX200
- Orion (Ed) with his 18" obsession clone
- atalas (Louie) who brought his Tak but didn't get it out of the car
- george (from NAS) who didn't bring his scope
- iceman (mike) with his 10" dob
- my dad (allan) who came up for a couple of hours
the group just before suffering deer eye syndrome! in the left corner is Orions scope, in the distance are my small 12" and to the left of that was Icemans dew bucket on the worshipping mat, and near that was frogmans light bucket, and behind mine was some little goto buzz click that has GPS (genral pointing skills) Oh I think that was Rodman's! And to top everything off they even wanted to christen me Mr Gadget. BTW Iceman I will get a replacement 9V battery off you sometime, you never know when I will need it when I use up the other 3
and yet again. SHame really that I wasn't in that photo! Not! I want to thank Frogman for the venue and the supply of 240 volt. My scope likes to live on the good stuff rather than that stored stuff! A snobbery thing really!
we saw the moon, (taken through a meade 12" SCT with 30mm eyepiece and a afocal prjection using a scopetronix gadget thingy that looks like a german hand grenade (and can swollow anything including a 31mm nagler), and a superior Pentax *istDS. None of that cheap taiwanese plastic here, just japanese!
and we saw jupiter, a moon go behind and just before I left the GRS was peeking around the corner with the two moons on the same side. Technical description, it looked nice!
an my small little scope expertly forelit by one of those eveready energizer headlamp thingy's. A great find on this site as I went and bought one and fully reccommend it to anyone else out there who hasn't yet got one. I had a great time and it was worth the 154km round trip.
Great shots HOughy, it was great to meet you (and your JOYSTICK!!)
For those that don't know, HOughy has lady luck on his side having WON his LX200 12" in a competition. Think of all the eyepieces you could buy with the money saved!
Thanks to Ed (Orion) who was a true gentleman, letting us all ooh and ahh with the many vistas through his 18" scope. In the end I didn't spend more than about 30 mins at my scope, because there were so many great things to see in everybody else's scopes!
I don't know how George can survive those temperatures in thongs and shorts. It was bloody freezing, and he was completely unaffected! Maybe many winters of observing builds one's immunity to the cold???
Louie, great to share your company, mate. Next time I'll bring the beer. You'll have to bring the girls.... Oh, and I'll take good care of your 11mm EP. Thanks for the loan. Regarding my power pack that packed it up early on the Orion Dewzapper, the strangest thing is that this morning, it has 75% power without using the charger...work that out!?? I think the message is that a cheap power pack often turns out to be a NASTY power pack!
Anthony and Mike were their usual enthusiastic selves. Nice to meet Papa Iceman too! Anthony, you truly have the best viewing site within cooee of the Central Coast (I wonder if your boss would sell a small parcel of land to the CC astronomers...maybe I am getting ahead of myself!!!?). Mike was showing off his home made remote controlled focuser. Very cool, mate!
For those that missed out (eg Wayne, Andrew M, Gary K, Narayan), you truly missed a spectacle. As Mike has said, the skies were a bit cloudy between 6-8.30pm, but even then there was some good moon viewing to be done. After 8.30pm, the heavens cleared up completely, and by 11.30pm, the sky was so dark and the viewing so good that I would describe it as "Champagne Viewing". Brilliant. You can imagine my surprise when everyone started packing up around midnight. The night was yet young! I succumbed to public pressure and packed up too, rather reluctantly.
Whilst I visited mainly well-trodden paths last night, I took a peek at the Sunflower galaxy (M62) for the first time, and found some nice globs around the sky. The GRS (or is that the GOS [ie great ORANGE spot]?) was clearly visible, and there was also an occultation of a moon of Jupiter, with Jupiter. Saturn had at least 11 moons visible through HOughy's 12". For the first time, I didn't take any notes, so I'll leave my viewing comments at that.
Thanks everyone for a great time. I hope this becomes an Every New Moon tradition. If so, we will have two gatherings in December: there are two new moons that month (I don't think that qualifies as a Blue Moon, which, if I understand correctly, is only when you have a second FULL moon in the one month).
I didn't think that we would have such a great night. I remember diving down and the sun started to come out of the clouds and it was shinning in my eyes. I was saying to myself I hope it clears up, and it certainly did!
Anthony,s hospitality is to be admired.
Thank you Anthony for having us and for the warm welcome and a nice cuppa.
Through out the night I enjoyed seeing how the other scopes operated and getting to use some eyepieces that I nomaly wouldn't get to use (thanks for that) One thing that I noticed was that the dew behaved itself. "Great stuff" honestly I don't think we could have asked for a better night.
And what can I say about those dogs. I'll tell you what next time I have to go to the dunnies I'll just hop on the back of one of them and ride it there, it's big enough!
Wow !so that's why I had so much fun last night,thanks guy's .
To Houghy,ED and George and Al it was nice meeting you last night and to our host Frogman thanks again.
All you need to know about the NAS is here Trufflehunter....... http://www.nas.org.au/ The next meeting will be held on the 27th May I believe that Mike is also coming.
BTW Iceman I will get a replacement 9V battery off you sometime, you never know when I will need it when I use up the other 3
Or with that red eye a cylon! 
