Weather in Perth turned out to be pretty good after early patches of cloud and a strong southerly breeze .Rushed home after work to pack the car and headed up to the hills to the clubs dark sky site . Well its not real dark but its away from the city , secure and has facilities although the western horizon is affected by Perths sky glow.
Tuned into the big DSOs and people wandered around checking out the views in the scopes present .Two members had those green laser pointers ....ive never seen them before and crikey they are powerful and a great tool for talks and explanation , the distance they travel is quite remarkable . Had fine views of M31 although Binos produced the best views , a bloke had a pair of Canon stabilizer binos which i tried ......to tell you the truth i didnt find them that effective and they are very heavy even when compared to my weighty Zeiss 7x50s. NGC253 and the Helix nebula where next on the tour , most people couldnt see the faint imprint of the helix but i managed to make out some of the stucture.
Around 8.30 i think someone yelled out satellites , o boy 3 of them travelling in a arrowhead formation about 20-30 degrees west of the meridan south to north. A American visitor belived they were White cloud satellites , Yank navel spy satellites that work in formation with a primary and 3 smaller ones to take fixes on foriegn shipping etc
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/prog...s_andronov.htm
They where pretty bright easy to make out although i could only see 3 . Later in the evening the darker eastern horizon came alive with orion ,taurus, canis major rising with the false cross and eta carinea just popping into view.Unfortunately dew crashed the party and it was time to pack up.
Today looks pretty good again so it could be a goer , just dropped off some film with some piggyback shots , fingers crossed they turn out and are worthy to share .
Good luck every one for tonite if your heading out
. Spent some considerable time polar aligning and couldnt figure why things were not working right until i realised i still had the scope in Altizuth mode from friday night . With polar mode set in the computer the scope was ready soon after ...geeezz. Got the camera set up and took some picks with a 50mm lens and 250mm lens of M42 ,the seven sisters ,the canis major area and taurus . Unfortunately the batch i got developed today were underexposed although some detail come out the background is very light on the print , think i had the f/r set to high 
o well its all about practice 
