Kincumber Astronomy
Viewing (written by
Lydia Macokatic)
NAS were invited by Central Coast
Councillor Phil Wood to hold a viewing for their annual Spring
festival on Saturday 27th September 2008 with about
80 guests.
"Situated on Kincumber Mountain, with
‘Kincumber’ an aboriginal meaning "Towards the rising sun" This
venue ‘Kincumber Kiosk’ is set in tranquil bush parkland setting
with magnificent views over Brisbane Waters, built in 1985-1986
with Community Employment Programme funds." The building is made
totally of mud bricks an interesting place to visit.
Six members (Chris Bond, George Livanos,
Scott Alder, Sarah Bulmer, Richard Clark, Brad LeBrocque)
including me attended the viewing. Chris Bond and Sarah Bulmer
car pooled which was great. A big thank you to Chris Bond for
being very patient with me as I was navigator in the car that
followed his and confused Sarah no end with my lack of
navigation skills that had us lost on the last turn to the
mountain. Thanks to Chris’ quick thinking he called us before we
got too far down the wrong road we were able to find our way
back and meet at Maccas just on dusk.
We were welcomed by Phil Wood after
arriving around 6pm. Members set up their telescopes immediately
as it was fairly dark by then. The NAS 12” Lightbridge dobsonian
telescope was manned by George Livanos and Scott Alder. Chris
Bond had a 10"newtonian telescope on an equatorial mount.
Richard Clark brought along his 5" Catadioptric
telescope and a pair of binoculars.
Visitors started to arrive soon after, then
all attended to the audience showing them the night sky and
informing them of the wonders of astronomy.
George Livanos got straight to business
aligning the NAS telescope and positioning it to view Mercury
and Venus. Scott Alder did an amazing job of finding the obscure
nebulae like the ‘saturn nebula’ and galaxies like NGC 353
even a comet (McNaught 2008) later on in the night.
The Sagittarius star cloud was clearly
visible from the site although there was some light pollution
that made seeing average.
Chris also brought along his laptop which
gave a great view of Jupiter and its moon Io in transit.
Richard informed us that there was an
iridium flare a -7 no less due at around 7.18pm which was
spectacular. A number of satellites were visible as spotted by
some visitors.
The guests left to do some wildlife night
torch- spotting for about an hour or so and gave us a break and
we enjoyed some light refreshments of coffee and tea, cake and
cookies.
Then viewing was on again with Scott
showing his expertise with finding the most obscure nebulae and
double stars. Sarah spotted some meteors.
George showed me the square of Pegasus
which was huge and said that Andromeda galaxy was rising soon in
the North East. Later Richard set out to find M31 with his binos
and he was successful. Was great to see this interesting galaxy
again although I think it looked clearer when I first saw it
from the NAS viewing site at Shortland.
We were treated with Pizza at the end of
the night which by that time we were all ravenous and welcomed
the moorishly warm food.
The weather was perfect, a warm night with
little breeze and not much moisture in the air which made a
great night for viewing.
Brad had his camera with him and took some
images of the viewing night below..
