I spent a fair amount of winter time in Canberra taking my then 4 year old son to hearing specialists when we lived in Young. My then mother in law wanted to have a picnic lunch in a park in the middle of winter with at least 6 inches of snow and cried the entire trip back to Young because I called her insane and refused to let my son be part of it. We instead went into a nice cafe where we could sit down in a warm room to have lunch.
Got some lovely clear skies up at Eagleview Saturday night, then some snow fell after midnight and then cleared to a beautiful blue sky in the morning...BLOODY cold though -8C Then we got snow bogged on the way home, while still on our property but about 1km from the house ...had to stay an extra night and let some snow melt to get out....luckily it didn't snow more over night and did melt enough by 2pm Mon, to make it down that steep track section..without sliding into the gate posts either side of the track you can see there next to me but below me in the last photo
Now Mike you’re just showing off.Thanks for those pics Just beautiful.Its even cool up here on the North Coast today.What you need is an old 75 series Landcruiser they go anywhere ride rough and work well with chains although mine were used in mud not snow.Still staying the extra day would always be better than returning to work.
Cheers and thanks again for the pics I always enjoy the updates on Eagleview.
Derek
Snow chains?
It's a stunning view you have from up there Mike, I'm sure the extra night was absolute torture unless you had no heating or food?
I'm shocked you don't have rails on the steps though so no nasty slide coming down in bad conditions. I guess you're not out there when it's raining or snowing.
We had snow here Monday morning apparently, I slept right through it. I'll see the next lot.
Now Mike you’re just showing off.Thanks for those pics Just beautiful.Its even cool up here on the North Coast today.What you need is an old 75 series Landcruiser they go anywhere ride rough and work well with chains although mine were used in mud not snow.Still staying the extra day would always be better than returning to work.
Cheers and thanks again for the pics I always enjoy the updates on Eagleview.
Derek
Hi Derek, something about snow makes a scene magical huh?...especially to most Aussies, as most of us rarely see it...it's certainly a joyous novelty to find myself with an observatory that not only sees snow on occassions throyught winter but also finds itself above the clouds sometimes, now THAT is cool
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leo.G
Snow chains?
It's a stunning view you have from up there Mike, I'm sure the extra night was absolute torture unless you had no heating or food?
I'm shocked you don't have rails on the steps though so no nasty slide coming down in bad conditions. I guess you're not out there when it's raining or snowing.
We had snow here Monday morning apparently, I slept right through it. I'll see the next lot.
Leo
Aaaah yes, I have them they were even in the back of the car, thing is, I never got around to practising fitting them , then when it came time to to put them on the car was parked in thick snow and on a slope next to the house and I couldn't for the life of me get it right bluudy sprained a ligament in my index finger too would you believe in my frustrated pulling when they got stuck under my rear tire (it must have looked like a comedy act?)...soooooo, I decided I might be ok .....
Yes, being stuck in a cosy mountain cabin, in the snow, with good internet, a warm fire and a fridge full of award winning beers.and Cider et al and watching the Olympics while munching on chips then a bowl of salmon pasta (with garlic, corn, tarragon, capers, lemon juice, parsley and spring onion...waaaas doing it tough, I know ...still, couldn't quite relax while the car was stuck in snow a kilometre from the house and if it snowed more it would only get more stuck....
All's well that ends well....and my wife says I have no feeling...I walked around for about 30min taking photos on Sun morning in shorts and without gloves, so by the time I got back inside, sheesh, my hands were in so much pain it took about 20min for it subside while slowly warming them back up under my arms and in a warm water bath...in 40 years of doing astronomy mostly in cold conditions, I have never felt this before and I now have an appreciation of what true frost bight must be like
The drive/fire trail, was pretty snow covered, no wonder the car had no hope going down the steep section ....and my butt and calves are sore today from all the up and down snow trudging, not used to it, bit like sand running/walking.
On the trudge back from the bogged car, I managed to get a nice snowy shot of where we spread my son Ben's ashses, with the nearby snow covered Tinderry peaks in the background, so that was nice.
Oh and you are quite right about the a railing and ice on the deck...because I do visit the dome regularly throughout a night of imaging, so I do need to be very careful when walking on the boards. I have started to sprinkle salt on any remaining water from the previous nights thaw at sunset and this actually works, it doesn't turn into ice, well only tested down to about -5C at least.
Mike
Last edited by strongmanmike; 30-07-2024 at 04:39 PM.
I've never used snow chains but from what I've seen on some of the TV shows about 4 wheel driving it's good practice to learn to fit them when it's not snowing. Worth looking into.
Is there a reason the car stays so far from the cabin or did it get bogged in the snow on the way in?
And you are absolutely right, a smattering of snow makes everything look amazing. We get it occasionally. One year in one storm we got around 10 inches, maybe 2015. That wasn't winter, that was in October in the middle of Spring.
I'm sorry to hear about your son.
My son suffers severe depression, is now totally deaf from a bump to the head, losing the tiny amount of natural hearing he had in just one ear (congenital deafness from birth) and now says he won't be turning 30. I'm devastated, that's August 16 he turns 30 and I'm trying everything I can to make him feel better. Sadly he won't speak to anyone but me. I lost a nephew and a younger brother to suicide and I'm determined my son isn't going to join them.
Get some railings for the stairs, even just a bollard top and bottom and a stainless wire rope, that added bit of safety because none of us are getting any younger and we're not as quick on our feet as we once were and often still like to think we are. Plus ice can be so quick. I get to see the carnage locally because people don't bother slowing down on our icy winter roads with warning signs everywhere and, once they slip a little they panic and hit the brakes, worst thing ever on ice.
I thought I had amazing balance till an extension cord tripped me up some time back and I stuffed my shoulder, elbow, both hands, back and knees. I hit like a tonne of bricks and I'm 63Kg at best. I did however twist mid air so as not to smack my head into the top of my 8" Newt standing mirror end down in the spot where I started tripping. I missed the Newt thankfully.
I'm quite agile, I did martial arts for an extended period when younger, no longer flexible with over 25 years of doing no training but still agile for 64 or so I thought.
Flexibility wise, I'd struggle to kick a toddler in the cods (not that I'd want to), I used to be able to get men over 6'4 in the head. I miss the flexibility.
Yes flexibility and martial arts need to go hand in hand for sure. Back in the day I was also pretty flexible, especially for a 135kg strongman in his prime, I could stand on one leg, grab the other foot and extend that leg straight out (Van dame ish ) with locked knees and spread my legs wide and straight while sitting on the floor, grab each foot and touch my chest and nose to the ground and hold it there, easily. I was a big proponent of maintaining good flexibility and this probably contributed to my low incidence of injury. At comps, onlookers were often quite surprised while I was warming up...I just always did it, both pre and post workout/training
Impressive flexibility at that size Mike.
I was flexible and wringing wet at 60Kg, probably not what anyone would consider considerably strong (though I was) but my size (5'11 approx) made me extremely fast. Size didn't matter in MA, speed was a huge advantage.
Though some competitors I prayed wouldn't get a decent hit in.
Sorry, off topic, I'm going to speak to a doctor on Monday and insist he get a good psychologist involved and immediately. I have 12 days.
I need to find how to block PM alerts going to my email on here, buggered if I could find it in the settings.
Wait, it's Vbulletin software, I was admin on a big site using the same software, I should be able to find it (admin access makes it so much easier, lol)
Quote:
The forum can send a message to your email address to inform you when someone sends you a private message. Receive Email Notification of New Private Messages
Ha, found it. I knew I wasn't as stupid as I always claim to be (people expect less of you).
It was an honour to have the pleasure of IIS moderator and longtime friend, David Hough, who came all the way from Newcastle, over the weekend up at Eagleview Another, newer friend, Phil Rogers from Canberra, also joined us on Saturday night, keen to capture some photons.
Having left Newcastle at the crack of dawn, The Hough arrived on Friday morning and we met up at 10:45am in Michelago, south of Canberra on what was a magnificent clear blue sky day and drove up the windy Mt Wilson'esque Tinderry mountain road in convoy, stopping along the way at the 1076m level for a photo op looking down over the Monaro valley and arrived at the 1450m summit just before midday. We enjoyed a bit of a tour of the property, in windy but sunny blue sky conditions, always good for anticipating a night/weekend of astronomy ahead
The weather prediction models had been in a constant state of flux during the week, changing each day as Friday drew nearer but although some clear skies were most probable over the three nights, the likely best night/s kept changing Regardless of the clearness, it was clearly the wind that was going to be the wild card. Spring is notoriously windy in the Canberra region during spring, in fact much of SE Aus is, so them's the breaks I guess..?
In the end, it was a mixed bag. Friday was patchy cloud and too windy to do anything (frustrating!) so we ate, drank and gas bagged the night away. Saturday was pretty good and mercifully, turned on only a very light breeze and apart from some on and off faint dark patches of mostly high cloud, remained mostly clear until about 3am Sunday. So, apart from the obligatory, away from home technical issues, for both Houghy and Phil, all of us managed to collect some data, yaaay! (I managed to get 6.5hrs of good data ). Sunday night was mostly clear but with patchy cloud again... but the wind had picked up to uncomfortable levels again, soooo both approaching the "elderly" classification now and still a little tired from the previous sleep deprived night, it was enough to twist our arms and force us inside to reluctantly drink alcomohol, watch a Netflix doco and a movie and talk everything astro, so not complaining!
A highlight and in true star party fashion, after an almost all-nighter, on Sunday we drove down to the Michelago General Store Cafe (20min away) for a delicious moreish works burger with hot chips and gravy and esspresso for lunch, eeeexcellent, jet lagged after star party, food!
All in all, a ball of a weekend...I think Alex would have enjoyed the burger photo
Cheers Houghy and Phil, it was great fun.
Mike
Last edited by strongmanmike; 09-09-2024 at 04:41 PM.
Thanks for letting a simpleton visit. It was good to see the better looking twin, and Eagleview is an amazing spot. Less baked beans though mate that wind throughout the night was nuts. I was extremely happy to be doing something Astro, I do miss my astrofest hit, this was just as good.
Thanks for letting a simpleton visit. It was good to see the better looking twin, and Eagleview is an amazing spot. Less baked beans though mate that wind throughout the night was nuts. I was extremely happy to be doing something Astro, I do miss my astrofest hit, this was just as good.
Pleasure was all mine Sir Houghy!
It's a great place for astronomers to hangout, huh?
That's an amazing area you have there Mike!
Silly question, how do you get on with cloud?
Several years back I took to carrying a lot of gear up a steep incline to a local lookout without vehicle access. Possibly early 2013, not long after having a bad heart attack. Part way up the hill I insisted my son run back to the car and get my heart medication and fast, I couldn't breathe and didn't think I'd make it to the top.
It was for a good reason, a total lunar eclipse.
I made it to the top eventually (after a longer than desired break) set up and started photographing the eclipse, then the cloud rolled in. Not above us, around us. I ended up doing a somewhat quick sprint back down the hill to my car with my gear, it was so much easier going down, drove like a madman down a steep, winding dirt road with kangaroos and wombats in the darkness, broke every local road rule and made it home in time to get set up in my back yard and continue photographing with some missing mid eclipse and the series of images still hang on my wall.
I've never taken my gear up there again and it's perfect to get away from the local street lighting at this one spot where vehicle access has been blocked.
I had considered building my own electric 4 wheel drive ride on/in golf buggy type thing, smaller and lighter to carry my gear in areas like that but I think the legality of doing so would be quite the grey area and after designing the thing and pricing materials including 4 electric motors, batteries and associated electronic controls I gave up. It would have required a trailer too.
Looks like an awesome spot mate... I'm planning a trip with a mate sometime in the new year to go and stay somewhere for a week where the skies are dark (B1/B2) and have a crack!
The long nights with the scope are certainly more enjoyable with a few good mates around that's for sure!
That's an amazing area you have there Mike!
Silly question, how do you get on with cloud?
Several years back I took to carrying a lot of gear up a steep incline to a local lookout without vehicle access. Possibly early 2013, not long after having a bad heart attack. Part way up the hill I insisted my son run back to the car and get my heart medication and fast, I couldn't breathe and didn't think I'd make it to the top.
It was for a good reason, a total lunar eclipse.
I made it to the top eventually (after a longer than desired break) set up and started photographing the eclipse, then the cloud rolled in. Not above us, around us. I ended up doing a somewhat quick sprint back down the hill to my car with my gear, it was so much easier going down, drove like a madman down a steep, winding dirt road with kangaroos and wombats in the darkness, broke every local road rule and made it home in time to get set up in my back yard and continue photographing with some missing mid eclipse and the series of images still hang on my wall.
I've never taken my gear up there again and it's perfect to get away from the local street lighting at this one spot where vehicle access has been blocked.
I had considered building my own electric 4 wheel drive ride on/in golf buggy type thing, smaller and lighter to carry my gear in areas like that but I think the legality of doing so would be quite the grey area and after designing the thing and pricing materials including 4 electric motors, batteries and associated electronic controls I gave up. It would have required a trailer too.
Thanks Leo, yeah, when the conditions are good it is a truly magic location, heck, even when they aren't
That's some dedicated commitment to getting the shot, right there.. heart attack?.. meah, pfft! no time for a heart attack! there are photons to capture!!
New addition to Eagleview Observatory arrived on Friday...
A shiny new Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-814 Blue Edition
This camera is essentially the same as my current Starlightxpress TRIUS PRO-694 Blue Edition but with smaller pixels @ 3.69micron vs 4.54micron. This change equates to a 20% finer image scale, dropping me from 0.84"/pix down to 0.68"/pix which should allow me to take better advantage of the improved atmospheric steadiness, experienced up at Eagleview, especially on the good nights. The increased sampling should also make deconvolution more effective, all translating to higher resolution images and via a simple swap over of camera bodies, everything else should stay the same
OK, so, why not a CMOS you may ask...? well, firstly and biggy for me (), it'll be a simple one step swap over, unscrew old camera, screw on new camera, grab some new flats with my flat panel and voila, start imaging! Nothing else changes, no new software or drivers, nuttin. Then, on a more technical side, this CCD has very low read noise, comparable with CMOS, but allows true on-chip binning and incredibly low dark current, so I can maintain the no need for darks (just dither guide and median combine in processing). There is also no need to play with gain settings either as this is optimised for each sensor at the factory, to get the best out of the camera, it saves a lot of experimenting! (again..I'm lazy) and this also optimises the full well depth to get maximum dynamic range. With CMOS, as soon as you increase the gain, you reduce the full well depth, which compromises your dynamic range. While not my focus, the CCD is also very linear in its response, so perfect for scientific measurements like photometry and spectroscopy (always imagined settling into some of this in my retirement..? ). Good CCD cameras, like this one and the others from Starlight Xpress, still have a strong place in science and astronomy.
What telescope are you imaging through Mike?
I'm curious because reducing pixel size through longer focal length telescopes isn't supposed to be a good thing but, I DON'T know, just heard through longer focal length larger pixels are the best.
Brand new CCD camera?
I thought they were extremely rare now (as in no longer produced) and was directed to a story online by my son where the last of a certain CCD auctioned at a very princely sum after going through a STUPID process of trying to replace a CCD from an old camera with a new CCD and nearly fainted when I got the price.
The process of simply swapping out the camera without making any changes sounds like a great outcome for you!
Then we got snow bogged on the way home, while still on our property 
but about 1km from the house 
...had to stay an extra night and let some snow melt to get out....luckily it didn't snow more over night and did melt enough by 2pm Mon, to make it down that steep track section..without sliding into the gate posts either side of the track you can see there next to me but below me in the last photo 
they were even in the back of the car, thing is, I never got around to practising fitting them 
, then when it came time to to put them on the car was parked in thick snow and on a slope next to the house and I couldn't for the life of me get it right 
bluudy sprained a ligament in my index finger too would you believe 
in my frustrated pulling when they got stuck under my rear tire (it must have looked like a comedy act?)...soooooo, I decided I might be ok 
Regardless of the clearness, it was clearly the wind that was going to be the wild card. Spring is notoriously windy in the Canberra region during spring, in fact much of SE Aus is, so them's the breaks I guess..? 
). Sunday night was mostly clear but with patchy cloud again... but the wind had picked up to uncomfortable levels again, soooo both approaching the "elderly" classification now and still a little tired from the previous sleep deprived night, it was enough to twist our arms and force us inside to reluctantly drink alcomohol, watch a Netflix doco and a movie and talk everything astro, so not complaining! 
), it'll be a simple one step swap over, unscrew old camera, screw on new camera, grab some new flats with my flat panel and voila, start imaging! Nothing else changes, no new software or drivers, nuttin. Then, on a more technical side, this CCD has very low read noise, comparable with CMOS, but allows true on-chip binning and incredibly low dark current, so I can maintain the no need for darks (just dither guide and median combine in processing). There is also no need to play with gain settings either as this is optimised for each sensor at the factory, to get the best out of the camera, it saves a lot of experimenting! (again..I'm lazy) and this also optimises the full well depth to get maximum dynamic range. With CMOS, as soon as you increase the gain, you reduce the full well depth, which compromises your dynamic range. While not my focus, the CCD is also very linear in its response, so perfect for scientific measurements like photometry and spectroscopy (always imagined settling into some of this in my retirement..? 
). Good CCD cameras, like this one and the others from Starlight Xpress, still have a strong place in science and astronomy. 
...what? embrace a change, learn new processes to collect data, rework my faithful rig? 
