Yes it was a great night, good turnout with plenty of people and scopes!
Was great to meet you finally Matt, good to see Josh becoming such a regular, and I'm pleased we got to wish you
too Randall and share that "old family recipe" birthday cake, even if it was all a couple of days early! (The cake tasted just as good - Mmmmmmm) We were all pretty amazed at your ASUS mini PC/Linux machine - especially Joshman!
All in all it there was a great mix of old friends, and new ones too!
There was also a good selection of scopes on display too: 8, 10, 12 & 16 inch Dobs, Celestron & Meade SCT's (2 of them with accompanying DMK cams), a Skywatcher ED80, and so on.
Some of the views enjoyed by various people included the classics such as M42 in Orion, the Carina Nebula, both the LMC and SMC were glowing nicely to the naked eye but looked even better under closer telescopic inspection, we did the Omega Centauri / Tuc 47 comparison, checked out the Centaurus A and Sombrero galaxies, Mars and Saturn were both prominently on display and we were seeing who could find how many Saturnian moons in their scopes, and there was a selection of meteors during the entire evening. I saw a particularly nice, dazzling white, one fragment and flare out very nicely! Some folks hadn't seen the 5th and 6th stars in the Trapezium previously so we had a bit of a look at those in detail. We checked out some favourite clusters : Jewel Box, Gem Cluster, the "Wishing Well", the Beehive (M44), etc, etc.
Good skies, good observing, good company!
The mozzies
were present, but not ravenous, and seen off with a quick spray of Rid; the fog
was a pain, but it was still coming and going up until 3:30 to 4am, with good patches of reasonable viewing quite late into the night. I saw a very quick glimpse of Jupiter just as it rose over the distant trees to the east, but it was swallowed almost immediately by a fog layer in that direction.
I think it was around 4am when Ron, Mike Chris and myself finally decided to pack it in and head for our respective beds / tents, etc. I think I settled into mine just after 4:30, but the damn rooster across the valley disturbed me just as I started to doze
so it was after 5 with daylight showing before I dropped off again.
Three cheers and a big Thanks to you Ron as usual for your hospitality
and on a personal note thanks also for the delicious sausages and egg breakfast this morning!
Looking forward to next months new moon!
(and for those interested we'll be enjoying April's New Moon at the Barambah Dark Sky Camp.)
what a sky. Hope you are under it!! CU Saturday arvo. 
I am really disappointed as I was looking forward to getting up there being a newbie and all.
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
Steve, we hold an Astronight every month with a Saturday closest to NEW MOON
But at least two of those are controllable, to some extent.
