by Marek Cichanski
MB was pretty good on Monday, although there wasn't any fog down below to help out. On the plus side, though, there wasn't any fog wave menacing MB, nor any dew. Temps were variable, generally a little on the cool side, but not too bad. There was some breeze, which got to be a little annoying, but not genuinely troublesome. Transparency was medium to good, I'd say. A few cirrus clouds formed up, but didn't really give us any significant trouble, and eventually went away.
With the lack of fog below, the light domes were fairly fierce, but the naked eye southern Milky Way was pretty good. I was surprised how much detail I could see in the dust lanes, given how bright the sky was. The dust had more of a structured, mottled appearance than I'd expect from a sky like that. (I doubt that telescopic work on dark nebulae would yield a whole lot, though.) I think I saw part of the Pipe Nebula with my image intensifier.
David Kingsley and I were the only two observers, and we had a nice peaceful evening. David was using his 14" dob to work on a survey of globulars, which sounded like a lot of fun. Views of some globs through that instrument were quite nice.
I started out in Ophiuchus, working through part of a chapter in NSOG for the first time, which was fun. I saw Barnard's star for the first time, and 70 Ophiuchi, which apparently changes position angle quickly enough for us to see it complete a significant portion of an orbit in our lifetimes. Saw some of the Ophiuchus globs, and a few opens. Switched over to Aquila for more doubles and opens when Oph got too low. As it got late, I put aside the "work" part of the observing program and looked at Messiers in the Capricornus area. M2 rocks! Quick glances at M31, the Pleiades, Saturn, and the Double Cluster rounded out the night.