Believe it or not, there was Astronomy at the star party. I managed to get a full imaging rig on a plane which was a first!
It's not everyday you get to look through a 20" dob as your first ever experience with visual astronomy - so thanks to Pete and Steve for setting that beast up, it was sincerely apprecaited. Watching the Veil nebula pop when you put that o3 filter in the eye-piece was amazing. It was like one of those old magic-eye things - it just popped out. Everyone needs a Big Dob in their life.
Steve also bought some super-rare solar scope from his cave of wonders at ENS Optical. The sun did a huge burp and all this stuff came out of it while we were watching. Sorry for the scientific explanation, but it was awesome.
We thought we would be clouded out from the weather, but there's a super weird microclimate there and you can watch clouds evaporate above you as the evening comes in. Wafts of super hot hair randomly roll down the hills like opening an oven door - so weird!
Day one was a bit of an imaging write off, stupid clouds refusing to evaporate and all. Bit I did manage to capture a daytime California Nebula which was nice.
We arrived at the villa with well packed equipment and beer. Unfortunately there wasn't enough beer because there was a hole in every single bottle. It was so dark there - I think Bortle 2 or so. Milky way like a blanket across the sky. I thought it was another bloody cloud at first...
As for imaging, which was my main reason for going, we got about 2.5 nights of clear skies with the Tuesday being the best by far. Historically we were pretty unlucky to get the clouds we did I believe. It's an El Niño year so all bets are off. I had a bevvy of targets planned but due to the clouds I decided to go for something brighter that I knew would net me a lovely image if the stars were obscured by obnoxious dihydrogen monoxide.
I've gone for a widefield of the Tulip/Crescent neb region encompassing both. I took an OSC and Askar ACL200 with filterwheel. I imaged in Ha-O3 and S2-Hb. There was so much Hb there I couldn't believe it!
I don't actually know how I am going to process the image yet, there's just so much signal across 4 different channels... I don't want it coming out like a rainbow picasso. The lastest plan is to ditch the S2, process HOO and isolate the hydrogen beta from the o3 and add it as continuum to the HOO image. This has been a massive learning curve and I'm still messing around trying to get it right. I've attached a screen shot that shows unique Hb areas.
I've attached some completely unprocessed auto-streched frames of the Ha, Hb, O3 and S2 data I got - I'm very pleased with what I have.
I am fully up for the next trip, though I would request less bullying from the northern contingent as us southern jessie's can't take the abuse :)
Thank you in particular to the Roboscopes crew, you put a huge amount of effort in and it was sincerely appreciated.
P.S.
BUY INSURANCE FROM THE CAR HIRE PEOPLE LOL!