by Glenn Hirsch
After calling the ranger Monday I arrived at MB @ 7pm (with my permit) to find the gate locked -- but the Milky Way was the only cloud in the sky! A beautiful crescent moon set in transparent, steady, dark (5th mag) skies. Alone except for the frogs and coyotes, I just set up in front of the locked gate, by the road, behind the open rear doors of my van to shield from the occassional passing car. Saturn @ 550x using a 5m Tac LE in a 2x Ultima barlow on an 8" Orion dobs. Oh yes. Then to a cheap Celestron short-focus 400mm scope I'm getting used to in preparation for our Dec 26 trip to Fairbanks and the Northern Lights. Takes some getting used to but good eyepieces gave me wider than ever views of Cassiopeia -- M103 and NGC 663 -- with this scope I can see clusters in relation to each other. Then M52 and over to Cygnus for the Veil (with an OIII filter) able to see the whole arc with a 24.5mm MeadeSuperwide at 16x (2.5 degr! ee fov?). By 815pm I was all set for Orion when the clouds suddenly covered EVERYTHING in what seemed like 5 minutes. Fog came up the road as fast, no doubt "this ride was closed." Was it worth it? Uh, YES