Grumpy

Thursday night I walked the dog about 9:00 and noticed how clear the sky was. As we walked, I also noticed how steady it was. Sure, there was a little twinkling down low, but overhead was really quite still.

"Cool," I thought. "I'll be able to try out the new two-speed focuser."

So I set up in the back yard, plugged the $2.00 SCT cooler in, and headed back inside to catch The Daily Show while the scope cooled off.

Thirty minutes later, I headed back outside to look at an entirely featureless night sky. We went from 0 to 100% cloud cover in just 40 minutes.

So you'll just have to imagine a really nice picture of Saturn here. Tonight's the opposition, so I'm a little bummed to be missing it. CSC says clear tomorrow night, but we're back to that 2/5 seeing. We'll see (or not).

Meanwhile, here's a picture I took today that turned out better than I expected. I can't tell you what it is, yet, but I think it's neat.