I had great fun observing at Montebello last night!

I spent most of the night with a Star Atlas and Binocs finding cool things, or snarfing photons from other people's scopes.

I found M29 and M56 in Cygnus. I think my friend was teasing me. Keep in mind that this is the friend who has shown me dozens of little foggy specs, which I know the excitement is in the finding. When I found M29, I exclaimed my discovery. Mark Wagner said, "You didn't see it, you cannot with binoculars." Well, yes I can. But he can't see it. So I carry on for 5 minutes drawing pictures and describing until finally he admits he can see it. My guess is that he just wanted to see if I could prove that I really did see it ;-)

That's okay! I don't mind. Mark had his Grateful Dead scope which had a beautiful view of the Wild Duck. He also taught me two new stars so now I know a total of 11. He tried to teach me more, but I have to go at my own pace.

Michelle Stone was finding some great stuff with a very wide view on her scope. Most impressive was 3 galaxies at once. I definitely did see two galaxies, and a little group of 4 stars. Michelle explained that those 4 stars are the third galaxy. I will take her word for it on that.

It was a good night for planets. Venus and Mars were beautiful naked eye. I wanted to see Mars through Rich Neuschaefer's great refractor, but the only response I got was a discouraging grumble. I have to wait for 2 years when it will be closer.

Bill Arnet showed me Neptune, Uranus and Pluto on his cool scope. Somehow it didn't seem like cheating when he used the computer to find the planets for me. It's only cheating when I use it because it allows me to avoid learning the Star Atlas. Thanks to Mark Taylor for helping me verify which little white spec was actually Pluto. I had never seen Pluto before, so I was very excited!

Several people were looking at Neptune and Uranus. Thanks for all the great views!

I'm afraid to tell whose scope was the star of the evening for Jupiter and Saturn. I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings ;-)

Seeing that moon pop out from behind Jupiter was awesome. It showed up quite far to the right, which is exactly what you would expect knowing where the sun had just set to the left. Thanks to Leonard for giving us the heads up! At first it was just a little spec, and maybe 10 minutes later larger than the other moons. We were all straining to see the crescent shape of the light but it didn't happen ;-)

Those two barges on Jupiter were quite visible. Now I know for sure that I had once mistaken them for moon shadows, I think on my second trip to the peak. We saw some beautiful white ovals and maybe some festoons.

Saturn was too beautiful to describe. I can hardly imagine this wonderful formation being "up there." It looks like a picture on a postcard, not a planet! I saw three moons, or maybe four. The one I thought could be the fourth was a little further away, so maybe it was just a star. Our resident poet was there; maybe David North will describe for us ;-)

Wouldn't it have been nice if Mercury had be visible too?