REPORT East Anglians 10th Feb 2008

[Black Shuck]

In attendance: -

Dave (Centroid)

Roger (Celescope)

Tony (Mightymonoped)

Ray (RayS)

Prasad (Prasadka)

Steve (Parallax)

...and Me!

Evening began at 17:30 with me being a smart ar*e and trying to do rough polar alignment without actually being able to see Polaris. 30 mins later with the goto pointing at Australia, Rog pointed out the error of my ways. Once we were all set up we had a bit of a challenge with the mist but it did serve to stablise the seeing a bit?

As Dave has mentioned we had 2 x C8N's and Steve's ED80.

The ED80 was definitely the star of the show (sorry bout the pun) and gave some super crisp views of M42, M45, Saturn and some stunning widefields wth the 2" Moonfish 32mm eyepiece.

Managed to pick out M81/82 with the C8N for the first time (I struggle with street lighting at home).

We managed approx 3hrs in all before the mist came too much of a problem and it was getting very cold. We retired inside to have a imaging processing session with Rog. Unfortunately the technology conspired against him slightly but he persevered to give a demo of Maxim processing one of his Veil nebula image sets. (Psssst! I now know how Rog gets the smallest stars on SGL) !!! Steve also brought a memory stick along with some very impressive images of M82 for Rog to try his processing on.

By the time we left the cars were covered in ice and we had an "interesting" journey home in the fog. I hope all got home ok.

Thanks to Dave for the venue booking and to Rog for the efforts setting up the tutorial.

All in all a very successful and enjoyable evening - we look forward to the next one.

All the best.

Bill£

[centroid]

The ED80 was Tony's.

Dave

[Black Shuck]

The ED80 was Tony's.

Dave

Whoops - it's been a long day!!

Bill£