Southern Sentinel Observing Report

After some very bad weather in Auckland in recent weeks, a last opportunity to get out and obseve in this dark of the moon. I loaded up the telescope and headed out to Kumeu early. It took ages to get out due to traffic, just over an hour for a 30 minute trip. Chocka motorway.

I set up and rested on one of the beds in the observatory until 6:30 PM. Dave Moorhouse turned up along with Alan Kane a bit later. Guy Thornley and Alastair Duhs arrived after 8PM.

Equipped with a full prepared Argo Navis, I had plenty to see, but not much time to be out. I had to be home by 10PM.

Observations as follows;

This is my first report after logging completly in Astroplanner. I have used AP for nearly a year to upload catalogs to the Argo Navis. I have used Skymap Pro and then imported into AP. I have logged my observations for nearly 9 years, and as of this report, no more objects will be logged in Skymap Pro.

I conducted a TPAS and had exceptional numbers, I employed IE and CA in my pointing model.

As with the last two observing sessions, I did a full horizon survey of horizon at Kumeu. Horizon Map taken from Astroplanner on the right.

NGC2467 was a highlight and is was good to catch up with some bright comets. Looked at a good swag of Messier galaxies in Virgo. I observed at higher power on and off.

High cloud was present most of the evening but this did not stop the observing for any length of time and some new objects were logged for the first time.

Home at 10 PM. Short and sweet.