The forecast at noon yesterday said partly cloudy, becoming mostly clear.  By 7pm the forecast changed to mostly clear.  So 5 of us turned out at Caledon under skies that originally held big holes among the clouds, but gradually turned overcast.  The evening was mild, with a light wind that kept changing from chilly to warm, and kept the dew away.

The seeing was variable.  I spent a lot of time observing the moon. At times I had crisp views, at times, the atmosphere was liquid, at times I saw wisps of cloud shadowing the view, and at times it was clouded out.

I was looking at the moon a lot because one of us was working through a list of predictions of occultations by the moon of stars.  I found the first one on the list seemed about at the limit of the dimmest stars I could reliably see in my aperture.  That made it a fun game.  When our more expert member called “It’s gone”  I figured out I was looking at a different star.  I had the second one on his list (magnitude 8.8).

Clouds made it impossible for me to see the next occultation.  For the third I slewed from Saturn back to the Moon just too late.  For the fourth, clouds came in as I was watching the limb of the moon move close to the star.  Looking back and forth between sky and eyepiece I was trying to track the star without being able to see anything in my eyepiece.  Finally the clouds lightened and I saw the star, though I couldn’t make out the limb of the moon, just in time for my companion to call out “it’s gone”.  I had reacquired the wrong star.

Jupiter had nice distinct edges to cloud bands. Mars was still only a peach colored disk in my aperture.  Saturn’s rings present well now, though I could see no detail on the planet or in the rings in my aperture.

By 11 the sky was mostly overcast and we all packed up.