It's first quarter Sunday night and that means I had a date at the bookstore tonight. A few friends and I set up our telescopes outside a local independent bookstore every first quarter Sunday night. Tonight there were just a few of us, but it didn't matter, the sky was terrible. Afternoon clearness turned to evening clouds - even a sprinkle or two. In the afternoon the sky looked promising. Enough to fix and use my homemade sun scope to look at lots of sunspots.
Tonight, Mojo and I set up two smaller telescopes - an AP Traveller and a 6 inch dob alongside our friends F4.4 22 incher. Aperture rules when mooning through clouds! One visitor to the eyepiece stood out tonight. A young woman wanted to know where she could buy a telescope. I told her about the local store that I like, and she said she had been there and they didn't have any telecopes that matched her living room color scheme. She wanted a telescope to look at the San Francisco bay through her window, but the tube must be oak to match her decor.
Luckily, there were minor breaks in the cloud cover, and a small crowd got to see a ovalish shaped object with one rough edge through three telescopes. Was it worth packing up the scopes, and driving out on a Sunday night to show the public some views of the moon for a little while? You bet!