On top of a mountain

We've just got home from an almost entirely astronomical holiday through NSW, precipitated by the annual Ice in Space Astronomy Camp. We went to the Deep Space Complex at Tidbinbilla, and came home via the Australian Astronomical Observatory at Siding Spring and the radio telescope at Parkes. We also managed to observe for four nights out of ten, which probably isn't a bad hit rate!

Our first stop was at a lovely B&B between Thredbo and Jindabyne. It was kinda clear the first night, but we hadn't set up the scope so we decided to be lazy. The last night, however, was glorious (how glorious? LMC and SMC very clear to the naked eye) - and we'd found a great spot for observing just up the road from our accomm, very flat and away from the few house lights in the area. Paul, the manager of the B&B, had mentioned he's been thinking of trying to organise astronomy groups, so we dragged him out and showed him some of the sights, and talked to him about telescopes a bit too.

It wasn't a night for working through a plan, not least because we only set up my scope so J and I had to share. So we had a look at Jupiter, who was brilliant, and then J managed to find Uranus! Which Paul didn't think was that impressive - just a blue smudge - but I was wildly pleased.

We had a look at some Messier objects, largely to show off: M8 (Lagoon Nebula), M16 (Eagle Nebula), M17 (Omega Nebula), M20 (Trifid Nebula), M22, M23, M24 (Star Cloud), M25, M54, M69, and M70! - and NGC6652 because it was in the neighbourhood, as well as 47 Tuc. I am still not that enamoured of open clusters for their own sakes - many just don't seem to have outstanding features, for my money - but I adore globular clusters. I don't really know why; I think it's that looking at them for a while, you can start to pick out detail - slowly but surely. I love all of the nebulae we saw, and the Star Cloud blew me away: I was looking through the eye-piece as J star-hopped via the Rigel, and it just suddenly appeared. Awesome.

We also had a go at photographing the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas, and I will upload some of those when I find the camera amongst the end-of-holiday detritus.

That's what you get for impulse buys

Seems like a boring time of year as far as the sky in urban Melbourne is concerned; or maybe that's because we're not staying up late enough, so the sky isn't getting dark enough.

Anyway: the impulse buy was the Telrad. Turns out it's not particularly easy to mount on the Sky-90, which is a shame. To set that right, a box turned up today, to receive which I was required to stay home: it contained a Rigel QuickFinder, which is exactly the same idea as a Telrad, just a bit smaller and easier to mount on Ptolemy.

Unbeknownst to me, J also decided to add an Extender-Q to Ptolemy. Essentially this corrects the Sky-90 for looking at the moon and planets, and gives an extra 350mm of focal length. Now, with the zoom, I have 265x max magnification, though it will take a very steady night sky to get to that level. It does make the scope look totally lopsided, but it also made Jupiter HUGE. Which was cool... pity the atmosphere was so whacked, at least partly from the heat.

We decided to play with the Rigel by choosing a couple of Messier objects in Sagittarius to try and find. First we tried to find M70; pretty sure we got the right area, but it must be too dim; M69 was also too dim, and I'm not convinced we got the right area. M54, however: bingo! Right where it should have been - a very faint globular, but definitely there. Then J realised that with Achenar pretty high up, one of his longed-for targets should be visible... and there, lo and behold, was the glory that is the globular cluster of 47 Tuc. This is one of the brightest globular clusters in our sky, and it looked awesome even in our light-polluted backyard.

All up, a good night's viewing.