I set up my Meade 127ed "apo" (so to speak) on my sidewalk last night at 9pm. The seeing was bad. I decided to go for open clusters, starting in Cass and then moving to Auriga. After finding some of the nicer ones in Cass, I noticed that they seemed dimmer than they should. One ought to look up from the scope once in a while. A high altitude haze had moved in. I looked quickly at the Messier clusters in Auriga, then took a gander at M42 and packed it in. The good news is that it was unusually dry for an Alameda evening - my table and cases are usually quite moist or even wet after an hour, but last night they remained dry. That meant that I could pack everything up and get to bed sooner. :-(