Hello astronomy fans! I got out for four hours tonight. I thought that I was going to get a lot of progress done towards observing goals, but something wonderful happened instead.
One of my best buddies in the Universe and his fifteen year old son from Michigan arrived and I showed them, Polaris, Alcor and Mizar, M81/82, M13, Antares and M4, M6/M7,
M8, M20, M22, M24, M17, Jupiter, Neptune, M31, M57 among other things. Bascially The Obvious Stuff.
But it was great. Vance Bartell and I planted trees and shared grub during my second year of planting down south. He slept in the back of my pickup and I slept in my trailer and we shared groceries, hardship and friendship. Vance is a very talented guitar player, and after we had supper together at night, I would read books in my trailer and he would practice his guitar in the back of my pickup only a few feet away from the trailer. That might have been the nicest winter I ever spent in Dixie. In the piney woods of the Deep South, it is one of the nicest memories I have of that time.
His boy Brody is a very nice young man, a lot like his father. He said, "I wish we had skies like this in Michigan!". I take it that they have very light polluted skies, but I gave them tips on binocular observing (they have 10X50's) and how to journal and get a simple star atlas. They are two amateur astronomy enthusiasts!
There was also a spectacular pass of the ISS and Endeavour overhead at 9:57 p.m.