Last night was an unexpectedly pleasing mixture of excellent skies and visitors. After a murky, cold, and windy day, the cloud gods held their convention elsewhere and the skies opened up beautifully for us at DHO.
Tony K, Bob O, John R, Mike Z and (new member) Kevin L arrived early to set up and prepare the Cave for a crisp and clear night. After a long twilight, the wind died down, the predicted clouds never arrived, the sky darkened to a inky black velvet texture, and the Milky Way traced a lovely bright path across the entire sky. It turned into one of the six or so great (albeit short) nights of the year in often-cloudy CNY, IMHO.
Tony and John hosted about a dozen smiling visitors to the usual visual targets with the Cave. They also included some nebulae as substitutes for the missing planets. Kevin and Mike set up their visual scopes on the lawn. John and Bob captured plenty of quality data on their AP targets, while I stayed cozy warm in the chartroom doing my EAA thing until the moon rose around 12:40 AM, when we all scattered like cats in a rainstorm.
We members are all looking forward to a comparable night of observing again Sunday night. The show starts around 10 PM. Stay as long as you like. We’ll keep the (red) light on fer ya. There’ll be plenty of Vitamin “O” on hand (or in mouth) depending on the timing.
Here’s a few teasers from last night.
