I figured many people would be unavailable for our star party the weekend after Christmas day, and only two RAC members and two visiting families came out for it.  But we saw some pretty sights for a while.  I’m not sure why the 2014 schedule picked the night of a half moon – that’s my fault. I don’t remember why the weekend of new moon didn’t work out.  Of course, the moon was a beautiful target to show our visitors.

Seeing was good in the east for the Orion Nebula, but very poor in the west. That may have been the clouds approaching.  We knew the evening would become cloudy, but we didn’t expect the sky to be completely overcast at 8pm.  Comet Lovejoy was still in the trees then, so we didn’t get to see it.  We did get to see a nice pass of the ISS rising to 80 degrees altitude.

— Glenn