Coe was very enjoyable. All of us were glad to be out in the moon-lit skies. We didn't need to use our red flashlights, it was so bright outside. The air was fairly dry and transparent. I was able to spot mag 13 IC and NGC galaxies with the first quarter moon nearby. I've noticed that my 20" Starmaster now provides me with a darker field of view after I added black flocking paper to the inside of the upper tube assy. I also flocked the secondary mirror support tube. The nearby bright moon had little effect on the darkness in the fov of the wide angle eyepieces (using a 31mm V and 12mm Naglers, and 19mm Panoptic).
At first, the low-level westerly wind was too strong at sunset to allow me to align my scope's Sky Commander DSO's. I couldn't stay pointed at Polaris to get things started. So, it was a manual observing period for an hour. By 9pm, the wind settled a bit but was still there somewhat all evening giving us a wind chill. The temp outside was in the 50's but felt lower. The wind gusts picked up again by midnight, so I packed up by 12:20am. Too bad there wasn't an aurora Sat. night. I read that there was aurora being seen up in southern Oregon on Sat. night, though. None-the-less, I'm very happy to be back south in California (from Oregon) with all of you and with the superior seeing we can get here. See you in two weeks.