late Friday night (Blue Mountains)

12:36 AM. Viewed Saturn in the C14. Saw several moons: Hyperion, Dione, on the left of Saturn, then Tethys, Rhea, and Titan on the right. Seeing is poor.

Instrument: Celestron 14-inch SCT
Mount: Paramount ME
Method: Go To

Cars are coming and going.

Viewed M13. It has several hundred thousand stars. It is 145 ly across. It is 25 100 ly away.

1:00 AM. We viewed the Double Double, aka Tim Horton star, aka ε (epsilon) Lyrae. Poor seeing. Still, it was easily split at 217x with the 18mm TV ocular.

1:09 AM. I piloted to M57 but didn't look.

We viewed M81 and M82 in the C14 with the 55mm but could not fit in the same field. Oops. Should have used the Tele Vue 101! Next time...

1:24 AM. We viewed the Sombrero galaxy, M104, in Virgo. Wow! In the 18mm, it was beautiful. Could clearly see the foreground dark dust lane. Averted vision to nearby star made the dust ring pop! I could see a glow on the other side of the disk. Fantastic. 29 Mly away. So cool! A career first for me.

Helped Kiron use Pat's big binos on tripod.

We were seeing quite a lot of meteors.

2:21 AM. Everyone's pretty tired. Some clouds still on horizon. To the north is good. The Milky Way low in east.