by Jay Freeman
Though I posted that I was backing off from Montebello due rto encroaching cloud, by mid twilight the sky was clear enough that I decided to try it anyway. No one else was there, and cirrus threatened in all quadrants, but I got an hour of decent observing in -- a nice fix -- using Refractor Red on the NexStar 8 mount. The quick set up and take down of this unit helped by not burdening a short session with extra activity, and the ability of the mount to point rapidly, even through small holes, facilitated making efficient use of what time there was.
I had forgotten just how good Refractor Red is -- highlights of the evening included a clean split of Polaris at only 55x (Vixen 8-24 mm zoom Lanthanum eyepiece at the 8 mm setting), saw NGC 4387 and 4388 -- the nose and mouth of the great smiley face in the Virgo Galaxy Cloud -- at 37x (same eyepiece) and, at 157x, a just-barely but nonetheless real split of epsilon Bootes. This last was first light for a new eyepiece, a Takahashi 2.8 mm orthoscopic, which did in fact work nicely.
After that, I tried to find epsilon Lyra, but couldn't see it through the cloud, and so quit.