Rashad's original title with the exclams pretty much say it.
Akkana and I arrived about sunset to find Rashad, Mark Taylor and John (? -- with a Celestar) set up in the SW lot, where we decided to put down. This worked out best, as it turned out the breezes at Coulter were about the same as SW, and the lights were quite bright at the Ranger's house, meaning it would have been necessary to move up to the observatory, where the wind was a bit stronger.
After the setup ritual, the skies were not really cooperating. There was thin cloud banding and only the brighter stars could be seen (though polar alignment was simple; it was about like a brightish night in my back yard).
So the obvious target was Jupiter, very near the meridian.
It was immediately obvious that the seeing was exceptional in the FS128 at 150x (where I stayed while viewing The King -- 200x might have been better but my 5mm eyepiece is currently "up on the racks" at Texas Nautical, so I would have needed to jump too high).
On an off, most of us stayed with Jupiter for quite a while, perhaps over an hour. The GRS was transiting but there were no "moon events."
The planet was clearly sidelit. Darkening on the western limb was notable, as was foreshortening. This led to an interesting effect where most details showed well only from the meridian to the eastern limb, but also meant we were able to watch the GSFKAR all the way to the edge, then easily watch it disappear around the terminator! Way cool.
A string of nearly identical ovals followed the spot in the SEB, and at one point I was able to count eight showing clearly. There were two enormous festoons coming off the NEB, with tremendous tails drifting well into the equatorial zone. Listing all the bumps, lumps and other details would be too ponderous even for me, but there was no sign of the razor sharp line Mark T. saw Friday; the various bands in the north had reverted to their usual lumpiness -- which was seen in notable detail at times.
The images were remarkable in all the scopes present, and at one point I lucked out with a time of exceptional seeing through Mark's 8 SCT and caught a breathtaking panorama at about about 250x, conclusively establishing the upper useful mag range for moderate apertures at that point in the night (not counting Ak's short tube 80, my 5-inch was the smallest scope, with the Cave 6-inch, two SCT 8-inchers and Rashad's 8-inch f/7 newt all showing remarkably similar views).
During this period, a darkish but large hole formed offshore and we speculated that it might move inland and give us a bit of time to see the deep sky as well, and it turned out to be merely a foreboding... but it did arrive and we did get a look at the far dark...
After a while we found ourselves under quite a dark sky, with some clouding visible near the horizon, but clear all around The Peak. San Jose was socked in, and there was a haze over the nearby towns but not a thick fog... so it seemed brightish but transparency was outstanding. As a result, my first target at this point (the irresistible M42) showed an enormous extent of nebulosity...
It was a promising result. A later check of M37 showed more stars than I ever remember seeing in anywhere near this aperture, as the seeing was still holding steady, and even improving!
With something of a sense of urgency, we hit most of the "tourist items," fearing the clouds would return -- and not without reason, as another thin layer moved in shortly along with a slight gusting breeze. Still, temperatures stayed comfortably warm and none of the heavy layers came out at this point. I have seen colder nights than this in July...
Rashad spotted a couple of Galaxies at this point, and NGC 253 was putting on quite a show. Transparency to the south was quite nice until the thin layer resumed.
Which it did, but by then Saturn was nearing the top of its arc.
My first glance at showed an almost perfect image of Saturn at around 260x; very gratifying. Cassini's looked like a roadmap, and the Crepe Ring was in evidence almost to the edge of the planet. I admit I was content to settle in to a comfortable contemplation of this fine view, but Mark decided to "pump his up" to see what would happen -- well over 500x.
Soon we heard him exclaim he could see the Enkeelerdavicotomdick&harry smudge, which brought some skeptical comments... but I wandered over to his barlowed monstrosity and danged if it wasn't easily seen!
Spurred on, we all started pulling out our shortest glass. At 520x, the same could be seen in my scope, and the same proved true in all the other equipment. There was some image breakdown at that magnification, but the images held well enough to clearly see more detail than I've had this entire round with the Ringed Planet. The southern banding was more distinct that I remember since at least last year, but with the unique character seen this year.
This period of exceptional seeing held for some 20 minutes or so, until at last it was clear things were going a bit soft and most of us had to drop back down to the 250x range to keep viewing.
Nevertheless, it was still a wonderful "look" and I stayed with it for another quarter hour or so. It was so satisfying that I never went back to the planet for the rest of the night.
Why?
Well, the clouds went away, almost never to be seen again.
And this time it was *clear.*
Rather than run down the list, let's just hit the highlights.
By now, M42 was well up, and the sky was darker than before. Through the 128 at 35x it was easy to see excellent pastel tints of red and green throughout the nebula; the image was so constrasty that I used no filter at all on most objects for the rest of the night.
A notable exception was M43, which is indeed at touch more obvious in an H-beta filter, as well as the horsehead: a bust in both the Cave and FS128 (though detection was suspected in both, but it took Rashad's eight inches of ruling aperture to be sure).
The surprise of the night was more or less accidental: Mark mentioned the Pleiades looking particularly distinct (he has a fixation on them) so I cranked the scope around and the nebulosity was thoroughly amazing! The best I've seen.
The asymmetry around Merope was beyond doubt, and in fact so big it was well beyond the field of view at 35x. Fuzziness was much brighter around the other stars as well, to the point that I was tempted to find color, but really couldn't. This proved to be true in all the scopes.
As nice as the Rosette looked through most of the scopes (and John's 35 Panoptic helped show it off in the longer focal length) it was clearly at its best in the Shortube 80; lumpiness and striations were easily seen, as well as some of the dark background. It also looked pretty good in the finder.
John's Panoptic also yielded up one of the more inspiring (if common) sights when we turned it onto the double cluster; those are very fine widefield eyepieces -- it was really my first chance to see one strut its stuff in a scope of shorter focal length.
M81/82 were also easy finder objects, and showed three lanes for sure in all the scopes (including the 80!) and four lanes were positive in everything from six inches up, though not as distinct in my little five inch (not good enough for a clean kill). Perhaps even a fifth could be seen in the eights, but that wasn't clean either.
Anyway, we wandered from common to uncommon objects, spotting some obscure galaxies and other deep sky phenomena and sharing views all 'round. I lucked into NGC 720, a hitherto unseen *enormous* open cluster in Andromeda -- simply because I saw it with my unaided eyes and wondered what that strange fuzz was... M31 was extremely interesting in the Short 80.
Obviously, we had a heck of a night. A bit after the beginning of the new day, though, a coldish breeze came up and wore us down a bit; we'd been going at nearly a fever pitch for almost seven hours, and fatigue set in, so we packed up and were out of there about 12:30, all of us leaving about the same time.
So, we were all kind of stupid to go, but sometimes stupid pays off.
It sure did last night.
I hope the other attendants file reports; I'll be very interested to see how we all remember The Night That Should Have Never Been.
We saw quite a few bright meteors, most of them appearing to be Geminids. Sometimes they came in clumps of two or three; it's a pity we're likely to be clouded out as this promises to be an outstanding show, when it's that good one day early.
No counts or mag estimates from me; they were all just after dinner mints at a really big meal.