Hi, all... I'm back from my vacation.

We had lots of 90+ heat and high humidity (95+%) in both DE and MO. There were some nice electrical storms in both places, too! Unfortunately, the skies were cloudy for all but a few nights of our vacation.

The morning we left DE for the airport (at 4am) it was quite clear, and the naked-eye view of all those long-lost planets was refreshing.

On Thursday(I think) night (the 11th) in MO, I happened to wander outside to briefly gawk at the clear night before big ol' Mr. Moon came up. Standing in the muggy 80 degree air at 9:55pm, I serendipitously glanced high in the NE sky just in time to see a really bright object (brighter than Vega when it passed by the star) moving E-to-W at about 75 degrees up. My first thought was "must be Mir" (I had totally forgotten about the shuttle mission, being that I was fully removed from the astro scene for the duration of my vacation). As it disappeared in the west I looked up to see another bright-as-Vega object moving along the same track. At this point, I remembered about the docking mission! How fortunate to have seen the final docking exit.

It was also nice to see Scorpius and Sagittarius a bit higher in the sky than I get to enjoy at home.

A little note about light pollution in SW Missouri.... The house I was staying in is actually inside the boundary of Mark Twain NF at an elevation of 1300ish feet. It's a 30 or 40 minute drive to the nearest "real store". There is Branson (a big "show town") some 40 miles to the NNE, very little population (and no big towns) to the south, and little likelihood of development any time soon being that it's inside a NF. In spite of the high humidity's effect on transparency, it was really dark and starry there. Even Branson's dome wasn't very bad. There was also a security-minded/paranoid neighbor on the top of the next hill with mega-wattage lights (but them were a non-issue if I stood in the right places). I didn't do any star counts, but it was definitely darker then FP, and probably equal to Lassen. (but just a tad warmer!)

The one serious light pollution problem I did notice was natural: Fireflies (aka lightening bugs) are MUCH brighter than I had remembered!!!

I could actually feel my pupils flinch every time one blinked too near my face, or reflected off the side of the house. At one point while glancing down, I saw a repetitive, bright flash on the ground. My first instinctual thought was "those damned airplane strobes!" Guess again. There is no major airport near there, and the area is not under a typical flight path. It was just the lightening bugs!!! I stood in awe looking at the bright circles projecting onto the grass. It seems that fireflies have nearly-full-cutoff "fixtures" which leave clean edges around their projections. Unfortunately, they usually fly at or above eye level.

Thinking about it, I concluded that fireflies must be as much an problem for astro-photographers working in their natural habitats as airplanes are for us in the SBay!

Anyway, it was a great trip, even if the night sky was scarce.