by Bob Jardine
I don't think any of us saw the Crab. While we were looking through the clouds there was a glow around Saturn but I'm sure it wasn't the Crab.
I saw the same thing with my NP101 at 60x. It was a roughly circular, irregular glow, about the size that the Crab should be, but way too bright. After discussing with a couple of others, I concluded it was atmospheric/moisture scattering.
I should have tried the Crab later when the sky was clear by moving Saturn out of the field.
I did try that, when Saturn was nearly overhead and the sky was much better. The only difference was a slightly smaller glow pattern around Saturn, which I guess proves that it wasn't the Crab, unless it shrunk by about 50% in those four hours! I guess there was still too much moisture.
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Someone else mentioned in another message that the seeing was poor or fair. Actually, it was quite good early on. I was getting very nice splits of multiple stars while waiting for the sky to clear. Monster clean splits of Rigel, Castor, Polaris, and a few others, mostly at 300X. Later on, the seeing did degrade significantly, almost exactly inversely correlated with the clearing sky. By the time Jupiter was up high enough to be worth a look, the seeing was mediocre.