by Phil Chambers
Well, there were about ~6 scopes. Turley, Phil T., Me, Jim VN, and maybe two others.
The skys went from bad to worse to clear by about 9 or so. Good views of Mars, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter once the sky cleared. I left about 10:15. There were several carloads of folks to look through the scopes and they were patient as we waited for objects to come out from behind clouds. Even when the sky cleared it was "thick" with moisture. M57, which almost always shows well, was so dark in Phil T's 4 in tak that he didnt bother to show it to anyone.
I had the st80 on an alt-az and Turley had the brass ranger out. Mostly I showed Saturn at 67x. kicked it up to 190x for a few of us and cassini was sharp. Couldnt show it at that power because of no tracking and limited fov.
Jupiter at 67 showed a couple of bands with 3 moons on one side and one on the other. The seeing was pretty stable but transparency was the pits. Kids wanted to see mars a lot so they got to see a lopsided orange ball. They went ooh and aah over it anyway. The pleides was nice but the kids wanted to see planets.
The public parties are always fun.