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It turned out not to be too bad last night. Driving over to Keller and there were clouds to the north and northwest and west, but they were all pretty low in the sky. Looked like it could get bad, but luckily most of the clouds hung back while we were out there. 🙂 We didn't stay too long. Decided I wanted to get up earlier today, so we left at 10:30 or so. We could have stayed longer as most of the sky was still clear. Clouds would float through every now and then, but not that bad.
We started out with Jupiter, it had all 4 moons on the one side. I was looking for Venus, but wasn't seeing it. There were quite a few clouds to the NW and figured it must be over there somewhere. Then we did see it. It was between a couple of the cloud banks. Quite bright, couldn't miss it.. if there were no clouds. 🙂 Looking at Venus through the scope and it wasn't too clear, looked to be in a gibbous phase. I guess the moon was right there close by, but I didn't know that until later after Venus was covered by clouds. 🙁 We watched some stars coming in, Arcturus was pretty early, waiting for Saturn. So I arced to Arcturus, I then sped on to Spica and found Spica and then down to the left, there was Saturn. So, by 9:00, we had 3 planets, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.. nice. 8)
Some thin clouds to start with. Early before I could see too much, I did pick up M13, quite faint to start with. Concentrated on some brighter objects, had M51, and M104. Then I remembered Iota Cancri that Dean took a look at the other day and found it. Nice double, close to Albireo in eyes. Also M81 and M82 and the Leo triplet again. Besides Iota Cancri and Venus, the other new object for the evening was the Ring Nebula, M57. So things weren't too bad if you can pull out the Ring and the Leo triplet. Can we say AGNFA again! 🙂
One thing to note about Keller, either something died out there or, it looks like perhaps someone threw out some old garbage/meat. Something is rotten there. Worse closer to the south end, but you can get it any place if the wind is right.. or is that if the wind is wrong? ??? 🙂