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00:00 site local. Astronomical dark, moon down. Sun -79°. Moon 1% waning crescent. Median SQM 21.9. No long moonless night in the published window

Book a Night

2026-05-14

Eight minutes on Centaurus A

Best transparency of the autumn so far. 21.94 at the zenith with the moon well down, which is within a hundredth of the site median and about as good as it gets here.

Ran a Deep Field group of five on Centaurus A at 340x. The interesting thing was not the object but the timing: I asked everyone to stay at the eyepiece for a full ten minutes rather than the usual two, and four out of five reported the dust lane breaking into patchy structure somewhere between minutes six and nine. The fifth saw it immediately and has observed before.

This is now the standard instruction for that target. Averted vision does most of the work but only after the eye has genuinely settled.

Logged by Tomás Iriarte, chief observer.