Monday, January 31, 2005

17-December-2003: Shui Hau, Lantau Island

This is my first time to take my wife to stargaze with me, I had took her to stargaze when she was my girl friend.

The sky is nice and clear in the afternoon, we went to Tung Chung to have our short but enjoyable dinner. But when we go outside, we saw the sky full of cloud, anyway, we still proceed.

After the bus trip plus some short relax walk, we arrived and we saw an observing friend Bug who was already there, lying on the floor with his binoculars. The sky was still fully covered. Occasional cloud gap allowed us to spot some stars, but not enough for us to identify the sky. I planned to leave around 8:00p, bad.

The sky cleared up gradually. We scanned through the region near Orion with my C8, and the sky continued to clear up, and in the process, the gone through all the major winter showpieces, like the M31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 45, and a couple of other things like the Christmas tree cluster, etc.

Finally, the sky was covered again around 8:45p and we packed up all the thing, went home rather early, and took our bath well before 10:30p, great indeed.

One of the spikes and rubber feet of my tripod was lost in the trip, got to buy replacement. After some hunting, I found it hard to get other than from the distributor which is located in aberdeen (far far far to me) and need to buy in office hour, not to mention that I have to special order the items. When the annual leave is counted, plus the transportation fee, I end up buying from a UK vendor with about similar cost shipped to me. Finally, it costs me $270 HKD, what a big mistake!

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