Another grey day. Melbourne your killing me!

[DavidU (Dave)]

I see these strange tiny points of light in tonight's sky !

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by DavidU

I see these strange tiny points of light in tonight's sky !

I don't I'm stuck inside!

The 1st clear night in ages and I am laid up with a pinched nerve after physio today
I can't even walk at the moment

If it isn't rain, cloud or fog, it is physical ailments

[pgc hunter]

and I have to wake up at 6am so it's bedtime for me

Crystal clear but transparency appears to be poor.

[DavidU (Dave)]

My scope is rendered useless after an hour, dew +. I may as well have hosed it down.

[pgc hunter]

dew heaters ftw! I'd be dead without mine

[toc (Tim)]

What a frustration - I have no dew control at the moment.

Might as well have not bothered. My scope is literally dripping. I was going to do the hair dryer trick, but the wifey wouldnt let me borrow hers

On the upside, I gave the CGEM a much better workout - works REALLY well this mount.

[Spanrz (Brett)]

Ok, so who sold a bit of gear today or late last night? It seems to be somewhat of a starry night! Or did I just get punched up? LOL!

Took a few shots from the camera tonight, lots of moisture in the air. A lot of the shots came out glarey. 99% humidity @ 7.6c.

[Brian W (Brian)]

And over here3 in the Philippines it also was a night of stars... at least for a couple of hours and I feel much better!
Brian

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by toc

What a frustration - I have no dew control at the moment.

Might as well have not bothered. My scope is literally dripping. I was going to do the hair dryer trick, but the wifey wouldnt let me borrow hers

On the upside, I gave the CGEM a much better workout - works REALLY well this mount.

Tim, buy your own hairdryer.
I bought a 12 volt car one at Repco for $10

[Ric]

It was a lovely clear night up my way last night.

The only drawback was nonstop 20+ kph winds that put a damper on proceedings.

[blindman]

You do not know where are you living!
Just was in Melbourne over the weekend.......culture, shops, people you can communicate with...........
Sydney is little primitive village !
By he way when we were landing, I thought it's my last landing.....
Cheers Nev

[Manav (Yugant)]

Went to Melbourne on the weekend and when I came to Sydney it was no better and to make matters worse I picked up my QHY9 from Gama and now its wait.....wait.......wait.......TEC works!

Btw Brendan if you are reading this can you please send the MPCC adaptor! :p

[pgc hunter]

Originally Posted by pgc hunter

Liking the look of Wednesday's forecast...my only usable night this week. Let's hope the obligatory pre-frontal high cloud doesn't stuff it up, but I'm willing to bet my very existance that it will

Will it be a 6-pack and KFC, or a bag of galaxies????? Voting opens now...

Well predictably, my prediction was right. Western horizon is now covered and it is very slow moving so will take a few hours to crawl through. Also alot of hazy matter lingering about in places, nooooot good galaxy hunting conditions..... thank god I got my good mate Dan Murphy to hook me up for the night.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Well, with a pinched nerve, I wasn't going to miss out on a clear night so last night I spent broadcasting online regardless of the pain.

After I did my tests on my new peltier cooling on my Samsung AstroVideo camera, the night started pretty good.
I was visiting the usual suspects (the good folk in the Nthn Hemisphere like to see them over and over), then as the night moved along I noticed I was struggling to pick up some nebulae properly. All the usual Nebs were a bit pale looking so I went outside and found thick fog!

The only thing I could see in the sky visually was a very dim Rigel Kentaurus!
Oh well, atleast I could still see everything with the camera so I just kept broadcasting

The fog eventually cleared about 2am and the sky was magnificent.
It gave me a really good chance to test the cooling properly.

But, not that I needed to cool the camera. The thermometer told me it was -6c ambient
and the scopes, mount, everything was covered in ice!!!

The Peltier on the camera was pumping out ice by the bucket loads
It was growing in ice crystal formations all around the Peltiers cold block!

But the best part was that I was able to pump the camera right up to Full Gain, Maximum exposure, every setting on Maximum, and there were no hot pixels and no noise

I did notice around 4am that the live image was looking a tad out of focus but I wasn't able to get it any better by electric focussing. I went out and checked only to find that 3/4 of the 6" lens was covered in ice
And that was with the heater strap running!
I've never had that before.

Anyway, I will be broadcasting again tonight, but I have put 2 heater straps on the scope just in case it drops to -6c again

Isn't it nice to know that even on a totally fogged out night I can still do live video imaging. Ahhh, the wonders of modern AstroVideo cameras

I packed it in at 5:30 this morning after a terrific full night of 'Live' broadcasting

[erick (Eric)]

Had a great night last night, observing and videoing from the driveway until 2am.

Air was less moist than last Saturday night, or Monday night. Saturn holding up beautifully to 450x.

Good things come............................. eventually

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Same here Eric. Last night was another fantastic night.

I broadcast until 3:30am (too tired to go longer) and had magnificent views all night.

Was good to see lots of IIS folk in there watching and chatting along with the USA viewers
Thanks Carl, Davo, jj, JohnG, Bert, Bob, etc etc etc. Always good to have some Aussies in there with me to answer questions from the Nthn Hemisphere

[pgc hunter]

stuff me dead, tonight is looking to be potentially clear! Shame about the rocket-fuelled jetstream