Last night was one of the few cloudless nights in the last month. Although it was cold, I decided to load up a small 60mm refractor, drive up to Little Mountain pass east of Salt Lake City and split a couple of doubles just to get out of the city. On the drive up, dewing was evident on my windshield. Lt. Mtn. pass was windless and a little warmer than the city on the lower valley floor. The sky to the north north west was about mag 3.7 (zet Aur) with Mars within 2 degrees of bet Tau (Elnath). About 2 degrees north west of ElNath is 26 Aur, the 5.4 mag primary of STF753 (CCDM J05386+3030). The mag 5.4 AB pair (F9III+B9.5V) is separated by 12.2" from mag 8.8 STF753C and is listed as a color contrast double in Haas' book. The CCDM entry indicates that this system is a multiple. In the CCDM, the A and B components are listed at mag 6.1 and 6.5 with no separation while Cartes du Ciel returns a 0.45" separation. The C component is the mag 8.8 star at 12.2". The CCDM lists a fourth mag 11.5 component, but not having checked the CCDM before leaving, I was unaware of it at the eyepiece. STF753 AB-C was a nice white gold pair easily separated at 20 power and that was inspected further at 32 power. Along with Mars, I watched for STF753 for about 20 minutes. This has been an unusual severe winter featuring almost a complete cloud-out since mid-December. Multiple storm fronts have been punctuated with very brief gaps of clear air between the fronts. True to form, no sooner than I had set up and located 26 Aur, a deck of high-alitude clouds started to move in from the south south west traveling towards the north north east at a very high rate of speed. I continued to watch 26 Aur until the cloud band reached that portion of the sky and then transfered to another double near the zenith in UMa. However, the rate of speed of this high cloud deck was so rapid that by the time I got near the target, the cloud band had reached the zenith. I wrapped up with a quick look an easy wide, yellow and blue pair in the north-north-east - del Boo (STF27, CCDM J15156+3319), that appears on many colorful double star lists, including Mullaney's _Celestial Harvest_, Belmont Society Colorful Double Star list and the Astroleague double star list. del Boo is the 3.5 mag (G8IIIFe-1) primary separated by a generous 102" from the 8.7 mag (G0) secondary. With the high cloud deck closing in, I took a quick look at M13 in Hercules and finished with an attempt at another easy wide double, STF 1888, an unequal pair 5 degrees north of zet Boo. Before I could even acquire zet Boo to star hop north, the cloud deck swept in and ended the session. I did not measure the temperature. The small refractor with a dew shield did not dew up, as did a 32mm e.p., while a smaller 20mm e.p. did dew up. The approximate dew point is listed by our local weather service around -2.7C (27F) and the overnight low at the lower elevation airport at -3.3C (26F). - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs