I left work at 3pm and arrived at 5pm Friday afternoon closely followed by Phil @scribbly and David (not on
I let David and Phil into the house then put on some dinner and started getting the house ready for other guests, arriving the next day. I tried calling the locksmith but there was no answer. I set up my
So I thought, how difficult can it be to repair a deadlock? Not at all difficult as it turns out. A few minutes later, the door was opened and with a spare pair of hands from Phil to hold it in place while I reassembled it, it was working again in short order. I will however, be replacing that lock with a new one very soon.
I set up my 6”f7 and EM200 near the 18”. By now Phil’s Losmandy G11 and David’s Vixen GP were both assembled. Their
We had dinner around sunset then I collimated the 18” scope at twilight and calibrated the NEXUS DSC’s. David started taking photos with the ED 102 and Phil mounted my SV102ED on a SBS saddle with his Mewlon 180c. Hmmm, 4 scopes for three people should keep the waiting lines short ;-).
At this time of year it is astronomical twilight around 930pm local time. We began looking at objects, the order based in part whether they were going to drop behind trees in the west. We pointed the 18” at comet 2022 E3 a bit too late and only glimpsed it through tree branches.
Friday night was excellent in both transparency and seeing. The standout highlight of the night’s observations was of a hint of dull faint rusty red hydrogen alpha emission showing up on some parts of the Orion nebula. We also glimpsed it in Phil's Melon 180.
A bit of high cloud came in at about 1am on Friday night that sent us to bed a bit early. Probably a good thing for me. I was expecting several more guests the next night.
I snapped this picture of the Large Magellanic Cloud as the cloud came in Friday night.
After a leisurely start, I began preparing the evenings astro-feast. It's a pork belly braised in onion and tomato with herbs and vegetables served on a mushroom risotto. It's my own adaptation of a recipe from Abruzzo.
While I was cooking up a storm in the kitchen, storm clouds built suddenly at about 4pm Saturday. We covered the scopes. That was a big mistake and one I'll never make again. No rain but high wind came in and my 100kg 18”
Saturday night was completely clear. The storm clouds cleared by sunset.
Visual telescopes included my Stellvue SV102 ED mounted in parallel to Phil's Takahashi Mewlon 180C on his G11, Logan set up his Takahashi TSA120, David's Explore Scientific ED102. I placed my hand made 6" f7 newtonian back on it's mount and again set up the 18" f5.5 dobsonian. Heart attack! The laser collimator spot was not even landing on the primary mirror. It was landing on the ground next to the telescope. I checked the trusses to see if any were bent. I checked to see if the spider vanes were bent. Nothing? Finally I looked at the obvious, the secondary mirror was pointing well off to one side. I loosened the lock screws and straightened the housing. All was well in the world once again. Blood pressure dropping. Ahhh!
The transparency on Saturday night was not as good as Friday. Martin brought his Sky quality meter (
This was Martin's first visit to my 34 south property. David had visited for the first time the month before but that was the night that the wheel on my 18” blew and we couldn't use it. So we toured the obligatory bright objects, M42, the Tarantula Nebula(
In between viewing, chatting, joking around with my friends, I snapped this single 20s untracked exposure of the Crux Carina region with Eta Carina in the middle of the upper frame.
Pentax K1 ISO 12800 20s
Pentax M 50mm f1.7 @ f2
