I'd like to say I saw a lot of new stuff this past Friday at Castle Rock, but I got waylaid looking at all the Sagittarius stuff again.

There were a few new things; I finally got around to looking at M80 instead of just absorbing the photons from M4. I also tried for the smaller globular near Antares, but I could not pick it out. I suspect the glare of 'big red' was hiding it. A couple of the more experienced observers (Mark was one, and the helpful fellow with the Pronto--I'm terrible with names--was the other) showed me some of the dark nebulae in the Milky Way. These are kind of subtle in the fairly bright sky so near the city, but interesting once you know where to look. While in the vicinity of one of them at the tip of the Sag. teapot, I also got to look at some small globulars (two in the same field) and small open clusters I had not seen before.

Did all the favorites: M22 (and three other smaller globulars in the same vicinity), M8, M20 (saw the trifoil pattern!), Swan, and many open clusters along the "route" from the spout of the teapot up toward Aquila. This swallowed up a lot of time, but I didn't even notice it go by, really. Lost in the stars, I was, I was.

There was a new scope this night, a Celestron 8" dob seeing its first light with the whole family: Mom, Dad, and Junior. You never saw such a gathering of the clan as surrounded that scope. Everyone (me included) wanted to look through it and see how it did. I thought it was darn good, certainly working to the limit of the somewhat unsettled seeing we had all evening (light breeze that came and went repeatedly). The new astronomers certainly had lots of help! Their son Matthew and I had a little session on how to use planispheres; he had one that is designed to be used by holding it overhead to match the sky. (Since he and I have the same first name, there was an amusing moment later on. I was back at my SCT, innocently observing, when Mom felt the need to constrain young Matthew. I must have jumped a foot when she remonstrated, in that Maternal Voice Of Authority, "Matthew! Don't do that!".)

There was also a fellow there who had just (an hour ago) picked up a planetary dob (long f.l., really small secondary) and was trying it out. This was also on the sightseeing list for most of the star party participants. Views were limited by the seeing; it'd be very interesting to see how this scope works on a night with still air.

Jupiter was the highlight of the night. Although the seeing was coming and going, there were moments of clarity. At the start of the evening we had all 4 moons to one side, and later Io came in front of Jupiter. We had the shadow of Io and Io almost superimposed at one point as they crossed the face of the giant planet. The amazing thing is how *fast* the shadow moves. It is one thing to read about why this occurs and understand it intellectually, but quite another to see the shadow scoot about 1/3 of the way across the face of Jupiter in about the hour I was watching it off and on.

My eyes started to give out around midnight, as they usually do. Saturn had come up. I gave it a look (still swimming down low in the atmosphere and colorful indeed with the atmospheric refractive effects) and called it a night. it.