Let me start by quoting Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.

The odds apparently were that Saturday wouldn't be a very good night, as was evidenced by the lack of regular observers at Fremont Peak. There were a total of five people observing on the mountain, all of which were in the SW lot. As you've surely surmised by now from the others' reports, the night turned out to be a real winner.

There has been no exaggeration in the amount of detail visible on Saturn and Jupiter Saturday night; they were both absolutely spectacular...

The single "Sharpie line" I saw drawn on Jupiter Friday night had been replaced with two less distinct, dimmer lines. The SEB was amazing with its endless chain of white ovals, and the GRS was much nicer (and more contrasty) than I recall seeing it all summer.

The "50x per inch of aperture" rule-of-thumb went right out the proverbial window when I first barlowed my 8mm (for 508x on my 8" SCT) and saw a damned good image of Saturn with just a little fuzz coming and going. The crepe ring was glaringly obvious, and the Encke-Keeler-Dealer was a clean kill. I enjoyed the reactions of my fellow observers as they first came over in disbelief to look at my outlandishly magnified view: "It's enormous!" And from there the magnification races began.

Later, deep sky turned out to be really good, too. The views of the standard winter Messier objects were fantastic. The detail in M42 was hard to look away from once I got a glimpse of it.

Oh, and not to overlook the pre-Geminids -- they were dropping at a fantastic rate for being a day early. I saw one just about every time I looked up from the eyepiece. During the times when I was intentionally kicking back to look at the "big picture" I saw at least one every few minutes; often 2 or 3 quickly in a row in the same patch of sky. One fell right next to Sirius and it easily matched magnitudes.

The company was great!

The weather was great! (50+ all night; moisture going low like Friday)

The wildlife was Great! (nice foxes; frustrating raccoons)

We also had a few visitors come by who "ooh'd and ahh'd" as usual, but had no idea just how big a treat they were getting by seeing the planets at a minimum of 300x.

By 12:30 we had enjoyed a full summer night's worth of observing, and were content to pack up, even though the conditions remained good.

It was a nice meal of photons for our "party of five".

Mark