Date: 20 - 22 March 2015
Location: Telok Sari, Mersing
Equipment: Reise 250D, Pentax XL 21, Vixen Orthos( 20mm, 12.5mm, 7mm, 5mm), Star Adventurer, Manfrotto Tripod, Canon 700D
20th March 2015
reaching the resort in mid afternoon, i took some time to check out the beach and the surrounding area. it was too hot to do any kind of setup, so armed with the camera, i proceed to take some pictures of the surrounding. close to 5pm, i started to setup the Reise and also making sure the Star Adventurer is pointing north. and the latitude is 2.65 degrees. after all has been setup, we went to have dinner.. recharging before the hunt for the stars.
as the sky darkened, Jupiter and Venus were the first shine making sure they are first to proudly light the night and leading the way for a wonderful night. followed by Sirius peeking through relentlessly, even before the last of the setting sun retreated to the west. as the last of the sunlight withdrew from the sky, the stars started to come out to play. twinkling, so did the thin clouds. then stars started to play hide n seek hiding and reappearing with the clouds. still there was plenty to see. I started to point the Star Adventurer with the Canon 700D in various direction and took random shots to see what i could capture. any spot with a clear view of stars, or so i thought. many of the consecutive shots showed clouds drifted in and out of the frame. i could see the clouds moved from frame to frame.. From Starfinder's dob saw a globular cluster called the Intergalatic Wanderer, said to be 300 thousand light years away. one of the furthest object that could be seen. there are things you just need the Starfinder to find.
![[smilie=cool.gif]](./images/smilies/cool.gif "cool")
around 2am, it started to dew, everything was going wet.. dripping wet. good thing newtonian mirrors arent very much affected by a little water. conditions persisted until the sun warmed everything up.
some of the objects seen were, M42, M78, M93, Leo Triplet galaxies, M44, M67, Sombrero Galaxy, M22, M17, M8, M20, Eta Carina, ngc 3532, M5, M6, M7, ngc 6231, M4, M80, M51. also the rising Milky way.
stayed up til sun rise. and saw a very beautiful sun rise, albeit cloudy in along the horizon. as the sun rose slightly above the clouds, the red hue casted a beautiful reflection on the sea, turning it rosy and golden. after breakfast, it was time for bed.
March 21
After dinner, for awhile it was cloudy, for quite a while, then it started to clear. although clouds may have persisted, but the clarity was better than the 20th March. with the Star Adventurer taking pictures and looking for fuzzy patches in the images to indicate objects of interest, it was indeed a good way to find things that may have seems to eluded the star charts. also taking picture of the winter milky way stretching from Canis Major to the south to Eta Carina. Took the time to look at the Crab nebula and also some other objects, also tried to look for the Owl nebula in the big dipper that cant be seen. wasnt the best of skies.
I went to sleep about midnight, then sky took a turn for the worse, heard commotion and found the lights outside was on. later found out that rain drill was activated and everyone packed. Thanks guys for keeping my gear as well.
![[smilie=cute2.gif]](./images/smilies/cute2.gif "cute2")
around 430 am i was awoken and joined them outside to only see everyone gathered around my dob looking at Scorpius. after 10 mins, clouds swamped the sky turning the sky into a murky soup and we called it a night.some of the objects seen: M1, ngc 1817 + 1807 (a double cluster in Taurus), M35, Around Orion area looking for ngc2169, ngc 2451, Iota Cancri, split Sirius the second star was very faint.
Conclusion
According to the experts, this was not the best Mersing has to offer. even so, it was way way way way better than what Singapore night skies can offer. indeed, it was. i could understand why those who had tasted the dark side yearned for more. hope to go for more of such trips. with better skies to take more of these wide views shots of the night skies.
sadly, when i used an old SD card reader to extract the pictures i took, it could not be read, then when i used another card reader, it only had 7 images left. i lost most of my shots.
![[smilie=dying.gif]](./images/smilies/dying.gif "dying")
maybe should apply the lock next time so nothing could be written to destroy any data in the card.. ![[smilie=bleeding.gif]](./images/smilies/bleeding.gif "bleeding")
running recovery tool to get back the things i lost.
