Hi Folks, Sorry for the long chain of emails attached to this original question; tried to clean it up :-\ Thanks Mat & David for the site suggestions! Anyone else see the occultation and how'd it look for you? (My email client wants me to "correct" that to "auscultation"!) I decided not to try for the disappearance, but the reappearance was great! The non-amateur astronomer friend I was with was just completely astounded. One thing was that it didn't seem like it took more than a second or two for Mars to reappear--maybe didn't have eye on the right spot or was using too low a power to see it really peaking out. In the interest of sharing observing sites: on Wednesday, a friend and I observed from up at the top of South Fork in Provo Canyon (right before you get to the Trefoil Ranch gate there's a spot off to the right whose signage makes it sound like an official city park--more like a gravel area maybe 150' in diameter). The sky not as dark as farther from cities, but not bad to the east and south particularly; overhead is great. It was easy to see the nebulousity around the Pleiades, for instance in both a 4" and 6" refractor. It's not too bad a spot for being so close to Provo & Orem--you do get the occasional car or truck driving up the road (it's probably a make-out spot). Seeing was okay, disappointingly it got somewhat worse as it got darker--maybe that's expected. This time of year, I recommend having some cheap sleeping pads to put down on the ground around your scope (a very useful observing accessory I've never heard mentioned, I don't think). Or you might want to wear some ice cleats or something of the like: very hard ice and frozen mud. It was cold, but other than fighting with the buttons on a mount hand-controller with gloves off (so I only pressed one button at a time), we were dressed for it and I enjoyed it. Although my friend's parting comment was: let's do that again. . . when it's warmer! Clear skies/no wind! John