Steve and I got out for 2 and a half hours of fabulous winter stargazing tonight. We knew that Io was supposed to come out of Jupiter's shadow at 7:31 so we set up at 6:30. The first thing we looked at was the Moon and to see if we could spot Purbach's Cross. I saw that we were about six hours too late for that, but the cross was in full sunlight and discernable, so I pointed that out to Stup and then noticed that a bright (4th or 5th mag.?) blue white star was heading towards the unlit side of the Moon. We spotted it at 7:02 and it disappeared at 7:16 p.m. The star we saw occulted was 119 Taurii, mag. 4.3
Then we switched to Jupiter and saw 3 moons to the east of the planet. We watched intently until 7:33 p.m. when Io started to become visible about a half a planet diameter away on the same side as the other moons. Totally cool! I think that was Steve's first time to see that and only the 4th or 5th for me. I took some time to journal these observations and while I was doing that, Steve saw the star reappear near Mare Crisium from behind the Moon.
After that he found NGC 2264 "The Christmas Tree Cluster" in Monoceros, I showed him the famous triple star Beta Monoceros, then bagged Y Canes Venaticorum for my carbon star search and called it a night. It was definately AGNFA!!