Five people brought scopes, ranging from two 18" dobs to a 5" newt on an equatorial mount. Alexey, one of my co-workers, came out for the first time with his new scope (the 5").
The sky was mostly clear, but the transparency was bad. Andromeda looked a bit unimpressive (compared to how it normally looks). NGC 891 was lacking in contrast, making the central dark lane more difficult than usual to see. The transparency seemed to change by the moment, and there would be brief moments of somewhat better clarity. Even so, everything was just a bit dimmer than usual.
Fortunately, the humidity did not cause too much trouble with condensation.
I went through a lot of the usual suspects, and it was great fun. Lots of Messier galaxies and their NGC neighbors.
The Orion nebula always looks great. There were moments when the atmosphere was steady enough to reveal six stars in the Trapezium, but there were also moments when it was difficult to get the primary four focused at 120x.
Eventually Saturn came up and looked nice, although turbulent. The rings are at a bit more of an angle now, and I could pick out three moons in close proximity. Rhea and Titan were fairly obvious on one side, and Dione was peaking through the haze on the other side.
Around 11pm, the sky conditions got noticeably worse. Everything was dimmer. We looked at a few last objects, and then the last scopes were packed up right around midnight.
It was a fun evening, and it was great to see some astronomy friends again. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, I was more than happy just to be out observing.
