Quite a few people turned up at Vekol Road Saturday night. It was the biggest turnout for Vekol that I have seen in several months. This obviously was a major weekend for Arizona observers based on the turnout at Vekol and the reports of other observers at other sites. The temperature was great, the air was pretty still and bugs were nearly non-existant. One astronomer had an encounter with a baby rattlesnake! It was damp for Vekol, but I didn't get any significant dew on any optics. The dew did curl some pages of my books and charts. Transparency was good, but perhaps not excellent. Of particular note was the Gegenshein which was pretty apparent at about 12:30 am. Mars' polar cap and Solis Lacus were well placed early in the evening. Saturn was well up in the east when I packed up at about 3 am. M42 in Jim Guttman's (I hope I got the name right) Binoviewers on Kerry's 14.5 Starmaster was outstanding. Kerry's scope also showed the Helix very very well. I observed some new to me deep south objects in Microscopium and Sculptor. Sculptor seems to be the home of edge on galaxies from monsters like NGC253 (very good in Mike's 8" Mak-Newt)and NGC55, NGC300 to the bright and tiny NGC148. Mike's scope also did a very fine job on the Saturn nebula. Spotting the Bubble Nebula near M52 in Mike's Mak-Newt was also interesting. It was made easier with UHC and OIII filters. It was just a haze around a fairly bright star. The key to seeing it was to spot the haze around the correct star, and not see a haze around other field stars. I mostly observed with my 10" f4.5 dob. I observed a handful of open clusters that are part of the Herschell list but not in Burnham's. I spotted 4 out of 5 of the Burnham's object in Microscopium and all the objects from Burnham's in Sculptor with the exeption of the Sculptor System, a dwarf galaxy. I may have spotted a glow in the 10" at low power, but it could also have been averted imagination. I also brought out my 3" F5 Jaeger's achromat which I hadn't used for quite a while. It did very well on M31, M8 and M20, M42, the double cluster and several other objects. I spotted the brightest portion of the Veil with it. Of course, the Veil was much more impressive in Gordon's 14.5" Starmaster. He also provided me with a very fine view of M27 and its central star. My little refractor didn't show any detail on Mars when pushed way past it's limits with a 7mm ortho and 2x barlow, but it did show an nice red disk with a pretty purple halo. Joe Larkin __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.