I also wish all of the TAC group a very enjoyable year in 2000.
It's not raining up here, just clear and freezing--20°F. Looking out my window at sunrise, the whole neighborhood looked picture postcard white with heavy frost. I didn't know you could have a white out with frost.
Last night, I spent a few hours observing Jupiter, Saturn and a few old Messiers with my Ceravolo Mak-Newt.. I started observing Jupiter and Saturn at 6 p.m. while twilight was still visible. The air was calm and already at 32°F. These first two hours of observing gave me the best viewing of the two planets since I've moved here. I quickly upped my horse- power to 400x to take advantage of the great seeing. I used my Zeiss Abbe 4mm along with a Celestron Optima 2x Barlow. At 400x, Saturn's image was still very sharp.
I could easily see detail on Jupiter in the north and south polar regions--usually not something I get to see most other times. All of the four Jovian satellites were very clear without any diffraction patterns around them. They were tiny crisp moons all stacked up to one side of Jupiter. Europa was very noticably blue and darker than the others. Ganymede's apparent size reminded me of viewing Uranus, but brighter. Jupiter's equatorial zone was full of detail with repeated angular swirls. The GRS showed its inner dark spot.
On the other hand, Saturn was exibiting to me the A- Ring minima. I could not see the Enckle Gap. Maybe, 8.5" of aperture is just too small to see that.
After two hours, at 8 p.m., the temp dropped to 25°F. My dew system was turned all the way up running four bands, but couldn't handle the frost forming all over the scope. The dew shield froze and the result was a totally fogged up corrector, 'inside' the OTA. After blow drying the corrector to get rid of the dew, I didn't get good imaging until a half an hour later--due to the corrector being heated up. By then, I was getting too cold to bother with staying out any longer.
My biggest surprise of the evening was my fortitude in remaining outside in 25F weather. That's something for me to continue with into the new year.