Clear skies (again) at Bentsen State Park

The weatherman was foiled again and we had clear skies in the valley finally instead of the promised rain for today. I headed out about 5:30 to meet Roy R. and Jack H and set up the Celestron and Orion scopes as usual. I was early enough to read the manual and play with the hand control a bit before the sun went down so was able to do a bit more with it tonight. I'm still not able to read the dim red light and had to use a white flashlight to see the display but that's ok. Venus and Jupiter put on their usual good show and Jupiter was in a better position earlier on. The four moons cooperated nicely as well. Jack led the group of about a dozen adults on a tour of the visible constellations and led into my view of Jupiter and the Orion nebula. We weren't able to see M31 as it was behind a tree from the celestron's position but we were able to find it in binoculars. Favorite overheard conversation: her:"we are all made of stars honey", him: "no we're not", "yes we are"... Several also commented it was the highlight of their night. One fellow from Chicago stayed later and chatted with us awhile and I was able to show him that Venus has phases. Venus is about half lit right now. By the time we looked, Venus had dipped into the murk and was boiling like crazy but we were able to convince ourselves that it was half lit.

The Celestron behaved nicely. Alignment was flawless and it behaved fine until I kicked the tripod hard enough to knock it off position. I realigned quickly and was back in business. It was dead on the few times that I slewed to another object. I'll need to get a better list of objects lined up next time. The tour is ok but many of the objects were too low or behind trees to actually see.