July and August Meetings 2010

August :

Private member meeting at our "dark sky site" . Very warm tonight with a moderate to high population of mosquitoes. Some nice fire flies too. Good turn out Lovely dark sky though both large telescopes misted up after a few hours. Sagittarius very good. Saturn excellent. The new Meade is proving difficult to tame,

July :

Nick, George and myself stood outside the locked gates at Pedros and go eaten by our mozzie friends . 15 mins and enough. Visibility pretty poor anyway

Tuesday June 15 Pedros 2010

Although not that clear a very well attended evening - numbers upto 30
Still dodging the clouds we saw
The Moon 3 days old
Saturn
M4 near Antares (Scorpius was an excellent sight rising in the SE )
Omega Centauri
Southern Cross and the "Jewels"
Alpha Centauri
The Double Star in Scorpio ( Graffias )
Trifid Nebula ( the steam from the teapot rising over the Palm trees! how exotic!)
Apart from the Society Dobsonian I bought my small 60mm refractor along - for a few photos of the moon which came out well

Nick tried to shut the meeting down at 9:pm but with little effect - a very busy evening

Tuesday May Pedros

Not sure why we turned up and why it was attended as well as it was!
Possibly because the very bad run of bad weather on these seeing nights.
Typically bad on the Society night - brilliant the following evening as was the case in April

Spent about 1 hr trying to see the gap between the clouds

Peter bought his refractor along - and then tried to sell it- nice scope but too expensive for me though as have no real need for it at the moment. Buyer needs a good mount for it too

18 March Pedros 2010

The last meeting on the 16th Feb was cancelled due to bad weather.

However this meeting proved much more successfull though not in large numbers . An additional crowd was supplie dby the Fine Arts Society who were also using Pedros - though our meeting had much less wine!

So as the evening grew dark we initally saw Venus and the Moon. Visiblity was clear though slightly hazy . As the evening progressed some cloud started to come in but otherwsise viewing was acceptable.

Apart from out old Friend the Orion Nebula (M41) we also saw a number of Globular and Open Star Clusters : M42 near Sirius , the fairly large open cluster M35 as discussed in the newsletter in Gemini and my current favorite the Salt and Pepper Cluster in Auriga M37

We also saw two satellites but in particular a nice pass of Lacrosse 5 at Mag 2.8 (predicted)

For a double star we chose Castor which is a tight double of only 4 arc seconds- it was nicely resolved in the 10 inch Dob though

We then spent some time trying to identify the constellations to the south of Canopus - in particular groupings in Carina and Vela which misled some members in thinking we had the False Cross.


After most memebers had made their excuses and drifted away we then saw Saturn, which was the highlight of the evening. Thats the way it goes folks!

Sunday 17th January 2010 Pedros Castle

This was the first general meeting of the year open to the General Public.
We have had two members only evenings since our last public meeting - these were held in an alternative dark site further North. On both occasions good dark skies were seen though the second included cloud cover!

On Sunday however we had a typical tropical clear but hazy sky. Jupiter was seen just before Europa disappeared behind the planet iteslf at around 07:15 PM An Iridum Flare satllite was also seen just after (Mag-1) .

The Orion Nebula was particulary fine tonight allowing high magnification.

As the evening progressed a high amount of dew became more apparent on the view finders as well as a fair bit of "tent" dodging due to the the new Governers visit there the previuos Friday The Andromeda nebula and M41 were not "bagged" though we did manage to see the "Salt and Pepper " nebula in Auriga.

At around 8:30 PM Mars was spotted in the East - some surface features were observed but no sign of any of the polar caps.


Much talk is of the new Meade SX 200 telescope just been donated to the Society , We need somewhere to put it!