What a nice night (and nice people!) at Fremont Peak last night! On the freeway, near San Juan Baustita, the skies were dark and drivers were using headlights. Once off on 156, the sun could be seen on the mountain, with low clouds (alto cumulus, I think) and not fog filling in the valley...who would win, observers or Mother Nature? Well, since no one can win against Her, it seems She must have a soft spot for observers, because after driving through a few wisps of cloud near the top, say about 2500 feet, it was wonderously clear. From the SW parking lot, where a half-dozen folks were just setting up about 7:15, the valley looked like the north pole, with rolling ice or snow fields to the horizon, except for the mile or so of white stuff pushing up against the mountain, where it roiled into a deep cloud crevass with a continuous motion that looked all the world like a huge waterfall; it was beautiful. As is got dark (very), with good transparency, we thought those nasty high clouds would do us in. Turned out to be the milky way in full array- so much for the perceptive skills of city boys!
The observing was very good. There were about two dozen observers and lots of interesting scopes, most of which I did not get to look through because I was fixated on completing my lists of objects around sagittarius and ursa major. I had lots of visitors to my 8" scope when I had my Collins Eye-Cube set up. The depth of view in globulars blew them away, although the galaxies drew yawns (mine included) as the cores illuminated but not the arms. Heck, next weekend I'm going to set up my ST 237 with Fastar and just do short, semi-real time exposures of the galaxies and see all those spiral arms!