Viewing Friday night was absolutely STUNNING on Glacier Point in Yosemite... Saturday was a bit, well, um, worse, especially early in the evening. After a 4am friday and next to no sleep, I only made it to about 1am on Saturday.

What was I doing on Glacier Point? Well, it was the Santa Cruz Astronomy Clubs annual Yosemite trip. First time I tagged along on one of these. Friday night was the best seeing I've seen so far in the 3 or 4 months I've had my C8.

Seeing was so good around 2:30am that I braved getting laughed at and borrowed a Nagler 4.8mm from a guy* with a Ranger and tried it on Saturn with my C8. Wow. I really expected to see a big mess of blur (so did the owner of said Nagler). Instead, Saturn was crisp at 400x, the cassini divisions in the rings were quite visible almost all the way around. This is even more amazing because Saturn was fairly low in the sky and behind some smokey haze. Jupiter was just a bit too bright for the nagler tho...

Jupiter was fine and sharp and clear at 160x with my 12.5mm Ultima. We watched one of Jupiters moons go into transit, I could clearly see it and the crescent shadow until well past meridian.

Sadly, Saturday was a lot murkier. Jupiter didn't even start to resolve more than the two main bands until it was very high in the sky. One highlight Saturday for me was seeing the entire Veil Nebula in someones* scope with a 50mm monster.

* heh. I'm terrible with names. A good number of members showed up for the Yosemite trip that don't normally make our local star parties, and I just don't know who these guys are. So if you recognize yourself, speak up!