But I get ahead of myself.  When I arrived, for the first time en mi vida, I drove up to the house to find Zach sharing unas cervezas with amigos John and Austin.  They were agreeable fellows, but aware of the time, I had Zach walk us out behind the house into a large, unobstructed field.  Zach's planted some saplings at the far southern edge, so in a decade, this might not be so great for us astronomers (though it might shield us from the constantly encroaching metropolitan lights), mainly a concern that people not run over the saplings in a future outing.  Still, there's PLENTY o' space in West Texas, and the same is true for Zach and Kelly's place in Lynn County.  Would be a nice locale for a field of telescopes (dreams available at the eyepiece).

I surveyed things, eventually getting my laser pointer to show Zach, John and Austin Sagittarius, Cygnus, Cassiopeia, Andromeda and the Great Square of Pegasus, Polaris, the handle of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major pretty low in the northwest these days), Arcturus, Saturn, Vega and the Summer Triangle, Jupiter rising, and of course, enormous, show-stealing, gibbous Luna who would frighten away the beautiful Milky Way, while producing her own treats for us telescope wielding earthlings to behold.  After surveying things, I got back in the car and drove from the front of the house, which faces north, to the black sky of the southern side, unloaded and setup my AT 102ED F/7 refractor on GSO alt-az deluxe mount with Voyager pedestal and Ho wooden tripod legs.  As I was assembling everything, putting my red dot and right-angle magnified finders into their stalks on the refractor tube and inserting the 2" mirror diagonal, Michael Barnett of the HSC drove up and quickly unloaded his GSO 8" dob.  Now we were talking.  Went from a one-man show to a full accompaniment in no time flat.  The moon was rising higher by this time, correspondingly the Milky Way continued its vanishing act, but this has no affect on the planets and double stars, and Michael quickly put Saturn in his scope.  The moons Enceladus, Rhea, Tethys and Titan flanked the globe with its tight 9 degree tilted rings.  Saturn's orb clearly had banding and the Cassini division of the rings was apparent at the ansae, if not near the globe.

After Saturn, Michael went on to Jupiter:  Zach exclaimed at the eyepiece, overwhelmed at the detail and beauty of Optimus Maximus in all his 8" mirror's worth of glory, the four Galilean moon attendees off to his left, Callisto, Ganymede, with Europa & Io dancing closely near Jove.  The skies varied in cloudiness, at times mostly clear and others mostly hidden behind clouds.  First, with my 2" AT 28mm UWA eyepiece in the diagonal for 25.5x and a True Field of View of 3.27° I thought I might as well try for the Andromeda Galaxy family, even though the relatively close, galaxy-busting Luna was rising higher, heralding her presence with a flood of light worthy of any city's light dome.  And M31 and M32 were faint blobs, for sure, but you could see them, if not particularly interesting under the circumstances.  The zenith offered better observing targets, being more free of clouds than the more angular horizon, so put the refractor on Epsilon Lyrae, the famed Double Double.  I used the Televue Nagler 5mm T6 for a power of 142.8x with the TFoV of 0.56°, the four stars of the Double Double unveiled.  Michael asked me to put his dob on the Double Double, being somewhat new to the heavenly host so I obliged, his 8" dob easily splitting the paired quadruplets with his 6.7mm eyepiece.  Jeremy Perez' wonderful double star sketch captures some of the glory at the eyepiece.

Seeing it had cleared in the east somewhat, I split Gamma Andromedae, Almach, for a nice interracial pair, gold primary with blue secondary.  Continuing the theme, I split Albireo at the head of Cygnus the Swan (or foot of the Northern Cross, as conditions permit).  I pointed out my wife is Indian, and my fondness for interracial binary stars.  Oh boy.  Not quite as dramatic as those two, we also split Eta Cassiopeiae.

I put Saturn into my little refractor as well, and got a nice representation, perhaps not what Michael's dob would reveal and probably missing a moon or so, but not a bad image for a scope half the size.  But returning to the 28mm UWA to frame M27, the Dumbell Nebula, it was very small in that eyepiece, but not inclined to use more magnification, the moon so bright I feared it might disappear altogether if dimmed with greater power.  It was an okay image for what it was, under the circumstances, and at least folks got to see it — kinda.  Going back to the 5mm T6, I then put M57, the Ring Nebula, into the eyepiece.  This was a bit too much, so went down to the Televue Nagler 7mm T6 for 102x and 0.78° TFoV.  Now that was a nice, ghostly ring everyone seemed to enjoy.  Again, Michael asked me to put these into his dob, but, unfortunately, clouds moved in to obscure the Dumbell, M27. The Ring Nebula, M57, remained naked eye visible and unobscured, and Michael's dob did quite a nice job on the Ring.  I am always reminded of the smoke rings "angelic" John Travolta blew in the 1996 movie Michael when I see M57.  Cool, baby!

We finished up on Luna, at 16-odd days old a big waning gibbous.  And she was beautiful, if dazzlingly bright.  Austin remarked about the huge "dot" in his vision where he'd been looking at the moon when he pulled his head away to look at everything in the night world outside the eyepiece, and I laughed, having done that same thing myself so many times (and about to do it again!)  She is huge and bright, but everyone enjoyed the terminator and all the details one can see on the lunar sunset:  craters, rocks, mountains and boulders with long, long shadows and pinpoint constrast on this place with no atmosphere — beautiful.  Of the things we looked at, I'm surprised by the many things we did not, but that'll be for another evening, and hopefully a dark sky evening with little to no moon, and little to no clouds.

The late hour beckoned me to pick up my girlies (two daughters plus their two friends) from the last night of the South Plains Fair.  John had long left, but as Michael and I tore down and packed up, Austin mentioned his brother working the Fair that night for the Shriners, and that Austin's firm had volunteered there for years, and he himself had worked there the night before.  Turns out I'd had business with some of his past and present colleagues in my previous job at Tech with Network Services.

A pleasant evening under the stars, and mission accomplished in terms of the reconnoiter of Zach and Kelly's place.  As Franz Joseph Haydn wrote in 1789, The heavens are telling the glory of God.   Indeed, at Zach and Kelly's place, they are telling.