Each year Philip Island hosts their Annual Whale Festival. It’s a good excuse to get out of the house for a weekend of cetacean-based learning, fresh air and the opportunity to get some astro images. Some of the Festival’s lectures are very interesting - this year it was a pair of lectures on whale evolution and one on the (sadly now extinct) Giant Killer Sperm Whales. If you can get along to it, I recommend it.

The weather here has been pretty poor lately - lots of cloudy or very cold nights (with lots of condensation and damp) that don’t really inspire me to get outside and start imaging. There are a few targets that are only visible to me for a few months of the year, and M16 (Messier 16) is one of them. It goes by a swag of other names, so you may be used to seeing it called something else.

In my last update I mentioned the ‘Egg’ in the bottom right corner of my image of NGC6188 and how it would make a good target for the Megalens. Well, my chance came around a lot sooner than I expected. I also think it’s fair to say that this image will be the last from the Megalens - it’s just not cut out for astro work. I’ll be saving my pennies from here on for an upgrade / companion to the SW72ED.