Its good to see that the sky, planets, and stars are still there after all this rain!

When I got home yesterday, the clouds were just breaking up a bit. I went out back and was surprised to see something bright near the western horizon. I got out the etx and took a look... it was jupiter.. and what was that other bright thing next to is.. oh. Mars!

At about 45x I could get both of them in the field. Very nice. I used higher power on jupiter and could make out the moons, but the cloud features were all washed out, presumably by our atmosphere.

My bro-in-law was visiting, so he got the opportunity to take a look. Unfortunately, soon after we started looking that way, a rather dense cloud decided to camp out at that spot.

So I glanced around looking for that other planet.. uh.. what was it called.. the one with the rings.. oh year.. 'saturn'! (Sorry, its been a while.) B^)

There it was, nearly overhead. So I pointed the etx up there, and .. what a sight! The sky was very steady, though I could only do about 150x.. probably because of the moisture content. But, after a few minutes, the clouds decided that was enough and covered up saturn also.

In we went with the scope, and started making dinner. While waiting for the rice to cook, I went back out and _all_ the clouds had cleared. Out went both scopes. Needless to say, making dinner and trying to observe at the same time didnt work out too well. Dinner suffered.

We looked at saturn a bit more. And also looked at M81/82, M42, and M31 in the 8". What a sight. Though, everything was _so_ faint compared to when I looked at the same bright stuff at Tahoe with the tiny etx.

This morning we woke to clear skies. And a nice 3/4 moon. So, after a bit of coffee out went the etx again. The image was very stable, but I detected a bit of fuzziness -- probably a combination of scope temperature and moisture.

Anyhow, its good to see the sky again. Now all I'm looking for darker skies.