On Sunday evening, 15 June, Rich Neuschaefer and I decided to take our 180mm f/9's up to Fremont Peak to look at the moon since we had been fogged out Saturday evening.

The seeing started out very good, then turned fuzzy until about 10 PM, and became excellent after 10. We couldn't believe the results!

Gassendi was just beginning to appear. The domes west of Copernicus were sufficiently close to the terminator to still be interesting.

We started at 230x on mine (and higher on his using his Zeiss binoviewer). The detail was astounding. There was much more visible than is shown in the Rukl Lunar Atlas. We spent at least two hours working up and down the terminator. All 5 small craters in Plato were visible, and we glimpsed the rille in the Alpine Valley.

After the dull hour of fuzzy seeing from approximately 9 to 10pm, we noticed the seeing getting really sharp. I went to 325x with my 5mm Takahashi, and he went over 400x with the Binoviewer on the moon. Rich decided to check Epsilon Lyrae, and it was too wide for fun, so off he went to Nu Scorpii and both pairs were easy with a clean dark gap in the 0.9 sec pair. We could easily have split something to 0.6 sec in that seeing, but we didn't know of any in view at that time.

We decided to start raising the magnification. I went to 650x on the moon and the view was still good. He went to an incredible 867x on Nu Scorpii and the stars got farther apart and still remained clean. We took his 867x to the moon and the image was sharp. I asked about Mars (which was getting lower than the moon) and we thought "why not?". Syrtis Major was in view and both the N. polar cap and Hellas were easily visible. The diameter of Mars is less than 10 sec. now (I forgot to look it up), but the images at 867x reminded us of how Mars looked back in March.

These telescopes are incredible. We were working at ~100x per inch on mine and at 122x per inch on his and the images were still good! I will never forget the seeing we had. I have never had such a spectacular night in all my years of observing. Yes, Gil, we wish you had come with us instead of the Saturday fog-out!