Marginal is good enough, but . . .

Well the Clear Sky Clock can be wrong!

It was calling for pretty close to ideal viewing conditions between 9 and midnight last night and they turned out to be marginal at best.

As I waited for four visitor’s to arrive, I set up the 80mm refractor near the fence to the north so I could see Jupiter, just above the trees to the south. It was about 9:10 and I watched Gannymede - it looked like a little white bump attached to the edge of the planet – slowly go behind Jupiter. About 9:20 four guests showed up and while Gannymede had already done its thing, I still had them take a look at Jupiter in the small scope, in part just to see what a small scope could do.

Earlier in the day I had been expecting as many as eight people. Turned out to be four – just one child. This was fine, since conditions were so marginal. (Besdies, the more I've done this, the more I like smaller groups. I now try to limit visitors to eight, prefer 6 as the tops, and find that it's really easy to deal with four. The smaller numbers are both easier for me and I believe the visitors have a better experience. )

After looking at Jupiter they used the six-inch and 8-inch Dobs to find Saturn on their own. That kept them busy a while, since three of the four had never used any telescope. I had other tasks planned involving Mizar - observe it with the naked eye, binoculars, and telescope and make a drawing - but conditions were too poor for this. (A group observing just a couple miles north had slightly better conditions, it seems – but the really transparent skies and good seeing that had been predicted never emerged.)

I did have my visitors look at M3 with the 15-inch through a hole that stayed open a while. But then I wanted to show them M51 - or some other bright galaxy (81 and 82 would have been good) but everything I could think of was shut down. (Trying to find a typical, dim galaxy in that murk would have been very difficult for people observing for the first time.) So I closed out with another look at Jupiter, this time through the 15-inch, and that was pretty good. The seeing was certainly decent.. They left about 10:45 and I took a last peek at Jupiter in the 15 - but by then even it was in pretty solid haze, so I packed up and went in.

I think my visitors went away pleased - afterall they did get good looks at Jupiter, Saturn, and M3. But I couldn’t do the kind of program I like to do where it’s more of a learning/discovery experience and less show and tell.