viewed sky glow (Blue Mountains)

8:02 PM, Saturday 3 September 2016. Had my camera rig (with Ian D's lens) set up. I moved back to the GBO. I charged Ananke, John Repeat Dance, and the SX.

Actually, I had to enable the charging function in the Sony recorder. Then I was able to recharge on the fly. The new Odec AAA batteries seemed to be working from well.

Heard our noisy neighbours.

Caught some aurora again. It was there at sunset and slowly fading through the evening.

10:30 PM. Looked at the Crescent Nebula (aka Caldwell 27 and NGC 6888) in Dan's Dob. 18", f/4.5. With a 13mm Ethos. Big.

10:48. Viewed NGC 147 (aka Caldwell 17) with his 21mm. Super freakin' faint.

11:07. Viewed Neptune and Triton. 8mm. Triton was to the east-south-east, toward the star of the triangle. Needed averted vision.

11:17. Jujubes!

Grabbed a jacket. It was cool again.

Dan ran into an encoder issue. Switched to star hopping.

It was not as dewy as Friday. Slight breeze.

11:39. Did some naked eye stuff. Sorry. Unaided. Dabih. It was about half the separation of alpha 1 and 2 Cap. Turned slightly clockwise to a1 and a2. B was a couple of magnitudes dimmer...

11:42. Looked again at upsilon 1 Cas and 2. Where I saw them the other night. Near the middle of Cas. Dim, equal brightness.

The sky was... strange. It did not seem dark. We were deeply dark adapted. But still. It was like the contrast was off. I postulated it was sky glow from energised oxygen.

11:45. Took SQM readings from picnic table. 21.00, 21.00, 21.08, 20.99, 20.96, 20.99. Very good numbers! 14 degrees.

12:33 AM, Sunday 4 September 2016. Tried, without much success, looking for the Heart Nebula in Dan's Newtonian. Too much power. It's a huge object. We used the GBO O-III filter.

Shot another picture from the front yard. But there was no aurora.

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Ian D asked about red light mode in SkyTools. Gave him some tips.

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I liked Dan's red flashlight. Same style and form factor as the one in the GBO but I thought it very clever that when you turn it on, the intensity is low; ours, when you click it in, is at the brightest setting.