I ended up at Lick Observatory Saturday night for the volunteer orientation session. It was windy up there, but the seeing was actually quite good. I set up my Starmaster 7 inch Dob outside the observatory and was stunned by how sharp the moon looked at powers up to 350x. I have never seen such detail before in the floor of Clavius. I diagrammed positions of at least 10 craters present in the eyepiece that were not shown in Rukl. The approaching wall of Copernicus was also an amazing area to study as well. The entire area was awash with finely oriented debris and microcraters in oriented chains. I have seen hints of this before, but nothing like the microdetail visible last night.
I also got quick looks at the moon, M53, and 4565 through the 36 inch refractor. The sky was too bright for the deep sky stuff to look very impressive, but Clavius was great. I wish I had more time to study the views through the larger scope.
When the big refractor was shut down for the night, I observed for awhile longer outside. I had to move to the side of the dome to escape the wind, but the seeing was so steady that I stayed another hour or two watching the moon and splitting double stars. When I got home to Palo Alto around 1 am I briefly set up the cooled scope in the driveway just for comparison. Very little wind at home, but the seeing was very soft and the wonderful detail on the moon had disappeared.
No wonder they put those observatories on mountains.