by Casey Fukuda
Kevin showed up around 5:30 and Bob around 6. There was a brisk chill in the air from the moment we stepped out of the car. It was going to be a cold December night. Kevin and Bob set up their dobs and Bob was trying out his new behemoth binoculars. I think he said the objectives were 80mm. Whoa, they were nice. We trained them on Saturn and definately saw an unmistakable bright oval shape outlining the rings.
The darkness brought out some great viewing, but it was soon apparent we were in for cloudy conditions. I wanted to show my brother around the sky with some easy to see objects. We looked at Saturn, M31, M57, the Orion Nebula and the double cluster. He was a real trooper, withstanding the cold bravely. I think he could have used one more layer of clothing.
Around 6:45 a very nice gentleman, (forgive me if I get this wrong, and please correct me if I am) who I believe identified himself as Jurek, showed up with his Mak scope.
By 7:15 the clouds were reducing our viewing to sucker punching. A few minutes later, we were completely socked in. There was talk about packing it up for the night.
About that time, we were in a discussion on the origin of early man's desire for scientific thought. It all started out with a comment I made regarding the stroke of astrological luck, coincidence, that the moon is approximately 400 times smaller than the sun and is also about 400 time closer to the earth than the sun and because of that, blocks the sun's disk perfectly during a total solar eclipse. Bob countered, "But is it really a coincidence?" A very interesting conversation ensued.
All of a sudden we all looked up the the sky started to open up. We enjoyed a great bit of dark viewing for almost an hour before the great obliterator rose in the east.
You gotta love this obsession, amateur astronomy. Why else would a small group of strangers gather on a very cold, dark hill top with nothing to warm them but deep space objects and the comraderie of new found friends?