by Bob Czerwinski
First off, my thanks to those of you who made CalStar a reality this year. A fun time indeed. :)
Observing with my 18", I thought the seeing really improved from Thurs. to Fri. to Sat., but that the transparency was actually best on Friday night. Still, to be fair, I wasn't looking at the same objects on Fri. and Sat. night, and star-counts from me are worthless. <grin> I really didn't do anything in the way of crank-up-the-magnification observing this past weekend, other than taking a short 470x view of Saturn about 3:30am Sunday morning (prompted by a spectacular view of Saturn through Rich N.'s AP 155). Dropping back to 133x, I then swung over to the Trap in Orion, with highway-sized gaps associated with both the E & F stars.
My last eyepiece-view for the wonderful weekend.