Well, I just got back after five days down in the Moab, Canyonlands, Arches area and I was able to get in two nights of observing using the 20" Obsession. The sky conditions were just wonderful, clear, crisp and the summer Milky Way just jumped out! Spent a lot of the time in Hercules early on going for A2151, A2197 of which galaxy NGC 6160 was the brightest, and finally Abell 2199/or NGC 2166. This image, http://www.saratogaskies.com/image.pl?i=29 helped somewhat and the goal with the Abell's list was to see how many of these faint galaxies we could observe, and observe with detail. It's a great example of visual observers using an astrophoto to aid in detection. The second part of the night was spent up in Pegasus with Abell 2593 of which NGC 7649 was the brightest (small, faint, elongated west to east) and in Perseus going after galaxies and Abell 426 centered on NGC 1275 which was oval in shape, had a small bright inner core and sat E-W. NGC 1275 was surrounded by a many smaller magnitude galaxies. We also spent time on some of the eye candy (brighter objects) and all of them stuck out really nice, some as naked eye objects. I am planning next summer to go back for a week and observe during new moon in these skies. I'll get a blog up sometime in the next week with pictures. The other highlight was hiking into Upheaval Dome, an impact crater from less than a 170 mya. It was rather cool to think this is the ancient (ancient for me, young in geologic terms) impact crater, representing several lunar craters. Here is a link for information on this impact site: http://lpod.wikispaces.com/November+29%2C+2008 A great getaway! -- Jay Eads