Hi, Yes, it was pretty good. The seeing with mars about midnight to 1 am was -very- clear for a few seconds, then -all- detail would vanish for a few seconds, repeat, repeat. As far as I am concerned, tthat was the best I have seen mars this year so far. Very nice. Took some pics with my casio, but havent mustered the energy to work on them.
Porrima "almost" split in a doubled 32 TV plossl. I was getting obviously 2 centers but no black space. Later, before mars, I tweaked the collimation (off just a touch) but never went back to Porrima.
I was using the C11 last night mostly to check out pre-lassen. I still dont have the az DSC at the right count yet. (I may have to take it off and see what it says on the package - horrors, that is like reading directions and us engineers dont do that [read dilbert]. :-)
Spent some time on clusters and everything looked very snappy. The sky was about as dark as I have seen it up there lately even though there was no fog over SJ or the Peninsula. Maybe saving electricity is working.
Early in the evening, only Vega was showing (sky still blue) and I actually found M57. Eric mentioned something about "averted imagination" but it really was there.
Eric Ayres was imaging next door and we all kept going over to look at his latest frame. He had the 10 LX200 "spot on" in focus and was taking advantage of it. That MX7 is -real- nice. I think he sold one or two last night.
There were around 16 scopes at Montebello including one who had asked the ranger where he could set up and she told him to "go crash the party" over there (but to talk to us first). He had his family and an st80 and I think he enjoyed the place.
It got down to 51 deg or so which was a little colder than I expected but no threat of dew. Even though we saw fog roll over the hill to the south about 1-1:30.
The moon came up, mars got the last views and we were all gone before 2. I was the last one out and was home at 2:10. A very pleasant night.