I'll probably make a surprise visit tonight guys...... LOL
See you all there, got lots to catch up on.
Hi RB.
Hope to see you tonight.
Wish "astro girl" a happy birthday from us all!
At 14 I suppose she has other things than stars on her plans for toniight
WOW!
What a turn out!
Great to "see" so many friends again. (Too many to list )
Great to meet the neighbours, Bryce (?) and his mum. Hope you enjoyed the night, and you are welcome to come again any time.
Why not join this forum and ask as many questions as you like.
Special thanks to David (racecar) and Jakob for sharing their nice views.
See you next time Mother Nature smiles.
yes a great turn out that was supposed to be a great nites seeing but
turned out to be a frustrating evening of clouds and other problems for some (like me)
i think Victor was the only one to capture a few frames from those on the dark side.
John and Jacob were kind enough to let our young visitor look through their scopes and Allan provided some bait to get him back over for future visits.
there was some talk of the planets looking good before the clouds spoilt things.
Deeno and i were the last to leave just before 3am
I have just returned from 6 days (5 nights) in the Coonabarabran region with my family, Phil Townsend and his family, John Gurkin and Anna Novak, and jjjnettie. We enjoyed 4 clear nights out of 5, just one night of cloud. So dark, so pristine. Seeing was a bit underwhelming, but still, we saw some awesome sights, especially many many beautiful galaxies.
It was a great turn out, was looking really promising at the start, but clouds started rolling over about 10pm or so, waited and it cleared after midnight, only to roll over again 1 hr after that. Managed to capture a single luminance shot of M83. The high clouds was playing havoc with the guiding as well, so stars are not perfectly round.
Also is a view from my corner of the field
Sorry I was quiet in my little corner, had some frustrating issues polar aligning with Alignmaster.
Info on the single Lum shot
Scope: LX90 8" with CCDT0.67
Mount: HEQ5
Camera: QSI 583WSG
Guiding: Orion SSAG
Exposure: 1 x 5 mins
Processing: Calibrate with darks/bias with MaximDL, minor processing in PS
Cropped about 70% and size reduce for upload to IIS.
Yes indeed Victor, I second Alan's comments about the galaxy being a very nice image.
Lots of detail and structure to be seen there for a single image...Good work.
Thanks to all who turned up to make it a great night.
Special thanks to Deeno for allowing me to operate ( caress ) his " rent-a-scope Dob and use his nice Panoptic eyepiece.
Glad you all had a good one. Nice views up here at Byron Bay of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus through binos. See yaz soon.
Should be some good shots of it around soon.
All these months of ordinary weather seems to have people craving for a photon fix.
I must apologize for the unforcasted clouds. They tend to show up just after I polar align these days.....
Impressed to see Geoff competently operate a telescope that doesn't sound like a coffee grinder.
Hope you get those gremlins sorted for next time Mr Owl.
Bryce (?) and his mum. Hope you enjoyed the night, and you are welcome to come again any time. 
