Those TACyons who have been following this series of little observing reports have noticed by now that slowly I've been "marching" down the Milky Way.

Last night at VanMeter I picked up at the "feet" of Gemini and the little corner of Taurus that nicks into the Milky Way. Started at 112 Taurae (aka beta Aurigae) and starhopped over to M35. The sky was pretty bright, probably from the incipient thin clouds. There had been a lot of cirrus earlier before sunset, and while it went away for a while, it came back later in earnest, so I suspect the upper atmosphere was soaked with water vapor. Down on the ground, things were pretty dry, and surprisingly warm. It actually got warmer as the evening wore on, or I was getting more used to the chill.

...Non astronomical asides...

This was the night the Ushankas arrived! Mark and I both had one on, and we both discovered that for mild Ca. conditions, these things are more than adequate. You had to take it off now and again to "cool down". Great hats!

This was also the night I brought the Millennium star atlas. There was a session with virtually everyone gathered around the roll-a-table with the three volumes open and being passed around. General consensus: fantastic reference, incredible detail, but no, not really useable at the the telescope. Several comments about Santa perhaps changing his mind...but the price was still daunting. With the shipping costs included, it is close to $300.

...Back to the Milky Way...

M35 was not terrifically impressive, nor was 2158, with the bright sky, but they were there. I could find no trace of I.2157 and 2129, however, in the same general area around 1-Gemini. 2175 was also shy, a bit further to the south.

There was a Crab (nebula) hunt. Some people thought they could see it, some could not. I did not see it in the 10" dob. that most of the "visibility debate" centered on. After failing on 2175, I took my C8 over there and looked again but, nope, the Crab was out for the evening.

Somewhere in here, Michelle pulled a fast one. She announced she had the Horsehead in view, leading to astonished "Really?!" comments from several of the more gullible (me included) among us.

Rather than starhop across a chart boundary, I skipped over to Betelgeuse and thence off looking for the small clusters 2194, 2141, and 2169. None of these stood out against the Milky Way background. Drifted down to 2264, which was quite evident and very nice. 2259, just north of it, was there, but was rather shy. I went over next to 2251, which is a fine cluster. It is rather elongated, looking almost like a wisp of smoke in some ways. If you're ever hunting up stuff around the Cone and Rosette nebulae, 2251 is worth a stop.

From there, I stopped off at 2236 on the way to the Rosette; this cluster was just not there at all, in spite of being only about 1 magnitude fainter than 2251 according to Burnham. The Rosette itself was a nice cluster, but no nebulosity was visible (indeed, little nebulosity was visible all evening).

About this time, fingers of cirrus were becoming very evident spreading from the west and clutching up all the western and northern sky up to between Polaris and the zenith. Sky thieves!

Went on, leaking out of the Milky Way to hunt up cluster 2112, but no dice. M78 was visible, however, although I could only see a little bit of nebulosity and two stars embedded (Burnham says there are three). This was pretty much the only nebulosity I was able to spot all evening, and it was darned faint.

Round about this time, we had some latecoming public arrivals. So I put on a little show of some of the sights around the Belt of Orion, plus the spectra of Betelgeuse (with the molecular absorbtion bands especially evident tonight, for some reason) as contrasted to the spectrum of Zeta Orionis, and the multiple stars around Sigma Orionis.

I was mildly surprised when Mark came over and said I'd have to lock up. Most if not all the others had already packed it in, as the high clouds had by now eaten up almost the whole sky. Orion was about the last to go (which is probably why I hadn't noticed until Mark came over), but even it was becoming a little fuzzy by 10:30. Short night, but it sure was nice to get in a session after all the rain and clouds of the past month.