Sue's fault (Blue Mountains)

Sue and Eric arrived at 11 PM. Back from StarFest. Or RainFest. Or TornadoFest. Sue exclaimed, "What are you guys doing inside?!" She said, during their drive from Mount Forest to the CAO, they could see lots of stars and the Milky Way. I thought she was pulling our legs. But when we stepped outside, we were shocked. In a few seconds, we could see the galaxy. Wow. We had just completely assumed that the sky was a write off. And that it would be...

It was amusing the sudden flurry of activity. Phil and I fired up the GBO. Dietmar went to set up his digital camera with new wide angle lens. Milly went for her binoculars. Paul N enjoyed an impromptu sky tour.

When we aimed the C14 at Jupiter, we thought, at first, there were only 3 moons. But a closer examination revealed two moons (Io and Europa again) entangled, very close together like a double star. I ran a time simulation in TheSky6 and learned that they were drawing closer. I checked the RASC calendar and it said there would be an occulation at 6:10 (I missed the bits about "completely" and for western Canada). But clouds started to hamper our efforts.

It wasn't long before much of the sky was covered and we couldn't, even with the Paramount ME and with TheSky6 and me trying all my newly memorised keyboard shortcuts, chase the sucker holes fast enough. Still, we were in good spirits, and thanked Sue for nudging us off our butts, if only for a brief time.