@Weixing - We had a great time collecting sea-salt coating on our lens. LOL
Btw, Davegn (:P) was saying that he encountered wild dogs at the tampines mountain bike trail before.
@acc - Yeah. Labrador is another tempting place to visit. Especially after reading the ob reports from Gavin. Must visit someday. Hopefully someone can start a Labrador sidewalk group there.
@orly - Great shot of Horse Head in the astrophotography forum! One more reason to justify leaving your awesome new mount in Singapore.
@starfinder - We did manage to observe a few double stars in the northern clear sky at the beach. 80mm are great sky-sweeping scopes. Can't wait to use it with a zoom lens to hunt 2012 DA14.
Brief report of Changi Beach trip:
- Stating the well-known obvious fact by now - sky was damn clear! With all the light pollution, the sea-facing northeastern sky was much darker than our usual urban sidewalk locations. Just simply a great feeling to look up with naked eyes and see all these constellations clearly again with a gentle see breeze blowing in your face.
- Food was great. The hawker centre was renovated and opened since early January this year. Most of the regular foodstalls are back - esp the famous nasi lemak stalls. Toilets are 24/7 and clean.
- The uppermost tip of Changi beach (as seen in the google map in first post) is currently under renovation and not opened to public. The rest from the bistro onwards are accessible to the public as usual.
- Clifford came early in the evening with his big bino and we had fun observing through it and finding Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon.
- Orion nebula looks amazing in Dave's 6-inch SCT. So much nebulosity and contrast! Most probably the best I have seen in Singapore so far - better than the 8-inch Istar view at light-polluted Toa Payoh.
- Fun to see a coppery red Moon just rising above the horizon. Took a quick unfocused pic of it thru the big bino:
- Clifford went back before midnight. The rest of us stayed overnight. Saturn was sharp and contrasty in the C6, forming a rough triangle with Arcturus and Spica. After another round of nasi lemak, observed Jewel Box, Omega Centauri, 6231.
- Plane watching was fun too. e.g. seeing A380 roaring above our heads!
- Highlight of the session - entertaining 4 police officers on patrol! Showed them Moon, Jupiter, M45 and explain to them the features of our telescopes. Never seen police officers so happy and thrilled during duty! After the session, they shook my our hands with so much heart-felt appreciation. One of them have a son who is quite interested in astronomy and was currently in Tekong. So upon his request (not I kaypo volunteer one har
), I showed him how the Tekong jetty looked like through the 80mm and boy was he impressed!
Pass them our paper "namecards" and hope they can join our future activities and talks.
- Now the bad news: crazy light pollution for a beach!! There is bicycle + jogging track along the beach. Along that pavement which has a narrow width, there are TWO rows of unshielded street lamps illuminating it for every few meters. The stray light was hitting almost all the way almost to the sea. The whole beach was much brighter when I visited it about a year or two ago with Gavin. What a pity considering the sky is still darker than most urban spots if one is facing the sea. Ironically, there are relatively darker spots around the hawker centre than the beach.
Will try to upload some pics here when I have the time in the future.
![[smilie=admire.gif]](./images/smilies/admire.gif "admire")
![[smilie=dong.gif]](./images/smilies/dong.gif "dong")
"The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance." 
