not much (Blue Mountains)

As the sky darkened, Tony tested the MallinCam on the Tele Vue 101. He called me over while looking at Venus. It was a pretty good view. But there were a lot of artefacts in the image. I finally convinced Tony they were on or in the camera. When we looked at the CCD chip, we could see spots and debris on the plate. I grabbed my cleaning kit from the car. With puffer, isopropanol, and clean cotton swabs, Tony gently cleaned the plate. Much better!



As it got darker, I showed Kiron how to use the Telrad. We used Venus as a target. It too was off.

9:49. Viewed Saturn at 110x with my SCT. Some cloud bands on the gas giant were visible. Titan was closer to the planet than last night. Was it my imagination? I couldn't seem to see other moons...

10:09. Just finished viewing the first ISS flyover for the evening. Katrina spotted it over the house. Six humans up there right now...

It was so windy my umbrella blew over. I attached it to the picnic table with a bungee cord. Later, as the wind persisted, I realised that I didn't need the umbrella. I took it down.

The wind wasn't letting up. It was blowing Phil's Obsession around, the shroud acting like a sail. My 'scope was shaking. I decided to move into THO to get out of the wind. And bugs. Seemed to be more mosquitoes than the night before. I continued to wear my bug gloves. The THO would also shield the impending moonlight...

I left my palmtop on the picnic table inside a waterproof map hiking bag.

11:37. We enjoyed a second long flyover of Space Station.

I noted that wifi signal in THO was still very poor. The second WAP was no better than the first. It was a good thing that I transferred the local copy of my lumpy darkness companion site files to the computer so I could still check my life lists.

11:58. I returned to α (alpha) Scorpii. I wanted to see its companion. I knew it was close but within my career minimum (I forgot about the startling different magnitudes). Started with the 36mm and slowly zoomed in. With the 26mm and Celestron Ultima doubler (i.e. 144x), I still could not split Antares, and was getting into poor rendering. It was shimmering with bad seeing.

It was still very windy. I could see some thin cloud. Occasionally, it would darken the view.

I noted that a deep sky object was near to Antares, NGC 6144. I found a loose open object, quite faint. My first impression was of a galaxy. But Stellarium says it's a globular. It was less than 20° in elevation. So the poor seeing, wind, and low elevation are not making this easy.

Tony successfully configured camera and monitor with red gel film. He showed me M13, the Whirlpool, etc. They looked good. We tried different integration settings. The 14 choice was good for faint objects with no moonlight; 7 darkened the background sky. As the Moon rose, we actually got to see the effect of moonlight. The red film works really well, both for the screen proper and the bright status LED below, and will help people—visitors, operators, and tour guides—keep their night vision.

Was feeling a little tired. Suggested break time! We all retired to the kitchen for cupcakes and popcorn. I drank 2 Cokes! Katrina popped in to relay that my palmtop was beeping! Oh! The 3rd flyover! By the time I got to my Psion, it was 10 minutes too late. Damn. Missed that one. Although it was a shorty.

1:24. After the break, back at it. We found the Moon up high. Jupiter was up too.

I could not split γ (gamma) Coronae Borealis at 0.7" nor η (eta) CrB at 0.5" nor Σ (Struve) 1932 at 1.6". Grrr. Bad conditions? Or operator problems?

I was certainly more tired. The sugar and carbs blast wasn't working. Somewhat irked I packed up. OK. I was cranky.

By 2:17, I was in bed.

I felt pretty frustrated. It was an evening with no real observing, no successes. One faint NGC which I have to go back over. The flyovers were the high points. Oh, and seeing comet McNaught K5 in Katrina's Dobsonian. I was really physically tired from the morning bike ride and all the running around in the day. And, despite wanting to, even though I kept thinking about it, I did not nap. But then, the high thin cloud wasn't helping. It degraded the transparency. The air was very dry but we couldn't take advantage. Phil thought the seeing was not good.