After the Messier Marathon was clouded out on Friday and snowed out on Saturday, it looked like the weekend was lost until Sunday afternoon came up clear, dry and calm. Rob Taylor called an impromptu star party at Stansbury Park and a few showed up to take advantage of the weather. Transparency was fair at twilight but deteriorated later as the temperature fell close to the dew point. Seeing was good with the wind being down and so planets, planetaries, and star clusters were better targets than the galaxies. Saturn was the main attraction being high in elevation and later Jupiter was visible low over the mountains to the east. I saw M46 and M47 unaided above the back of Canis Major. M46 has a nice planetary nebula NGC2438 embedded in it. M93 and M41 were also nice views. Of course everyone had to try for Sirius B and the Horsehead Nebula but without success at their low elevation. M42 and the Trapezium were good but both are getting to be low in the west by full darkness. Also looked at planetaries NGC3242 in Hydra and NGC2392 in Gemini. Ended up with M3 and M51 as they later climbed out of the eastern skyglow. The hardware attraction was Rob's 34mm series 5000 Meade Superwide eyepiece. In his 80mm APO refractor we say the sword of Orion...all of it, in my 17.5 inch dobsonian it held the entire bowl of the Pleiades but not the handle, and in the 32 inch Grimm telescope it just barely held the M51 and NGC5194 at 286x. It was nice to get out and I hope we catch some good weather next weekend. DT __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com