dodged clouds (Blue Mountains)

7:15 PM. Partly cloudy. Just looked at Saturn. It was swimming. Offered views in either 'scope, either the TV101 or C14, to Lora. Phil took a peek. Soupy. Millie arrived.

Put the red film on the Dell computer. Dimmed the screen.

7:31 PM. Next stop Venus. Could see the phase easily. Asked Phil if we had a 1¼ neutral density filter. I wanted to dim it. Both Phil and Millie offered their polarisers. We could see a faint star beside it.

Phil spotted the Summer Triangle. Enough to do an alignment! Phil suggested to Millie she could practice. We teased her terribly.

I turned on the ceramic heater.

7:49. We watched the International Space Station fly-over. We also spotted a south-bound satellite, very bright. But it was not on the list...

Grrr. Clouds. Checked the radar. It wasn't showing anything major. Weird. We were out of commission. I looked closer. The radar might have showed thin clouds. But it was sure affecting us. A big system. Dietmar guessed it would take a while to clear out.

There was no sign of our visitors...

Helped Dietmar with TPoint in TheSky. We reviewed how to deactivate and reload a model. He thought you right-clicked on it. No... Not right-click; just left-click on it. Once it had the focus, you could perform various actions.

8:11. It was warm in the Warm Room. Toasty warm.

Everyone headed to the house. I asked Phil to keep an eye on the driveway...

I reloaded my sky horizon profile into TheSky. Dietmar and I chatted some more about controlling the TPoint. He wanted to try AutoMapper so to refine his polar alignment. It lets you specify how many points you want and where. On hold, until it cleared up.

8:21. Still cloudy to the south. Grim, in fact.

8:36. The sky cleared! Weird weather.

8:41. Tried for γ (gamma) Corona Australis. Viewed in the TV101 with 10mm and the C14 with 27mm. Thought I detected a split in the refractor but it might have been wishful thinking. In the big SCT, I noted an interesting pattern, colour fringing. Orange on the bottom and kind of blue-green on the top. Then a cloudy went through... Bumped the power in the TV with a 5mm. SkyTools showed A and B separated by 1.4 seconds of arc. Oh boy.

With the Moon coming up I planned for more double stars...

Intercommed the house. Told people to grab their boots and toques. Lora answered. So who knows if they got the message. Then Millie came out. Dietmar was controlling his rig from the house.

Coaxed Phil out. Asked if I could borrow his computer, with SkyTools, again. If they went into movie-mode, there'd be a conflict...

9:07. Slewed to the Blue Racquetball aka NGC 6572. I could see the central star, at magnitude 9.8. Noted a little triangle of stars with HD 166872 mag 9.4, Tycho 00443-0638 1 mag 10.9, both to the east, and a faint star at the apex, west side, closest to the nebula, GSC 00443-0158 mag 12.8.

Slewed to Uranus. Pointing was off again. 18mm. I spotted Titania. Was seeing mag 14 stars. Confirmed. Reviewed the positions with Phil. Millie spotted more clouds.

9:32. Viewed NGC 7027. Phil asked, "What are we looking at?" A planetary nebula. I pulled up some pictures. Looked like a flying squirrel! That's what we were seeing, an elongated shape. It reminded Millie of the Dumbbell.

Phil said the clouds were coming in from the north-west. A huge solid mass. Surrendered his computer for movies. We headed to the living room to watch a flick.