Later that evening my daughters and I arrived at the AirBnB Neena and her family were staying at about 21:30, and, between watching bits and the ending of Eddie Murphy's Candy Cane Lane, I was setup and ready to show Marcos the heavens by 22:00.  It was, by that time, cold as the devil outside, and neither my girls nor Neena were at all interested in celestial exploration in the backyard or anyplace where the ambient temperture hovered near 0° Celsius — 😉.  Not that Marcos and I were happy with the weather.  I'd dressed for it better, but we were going to make a quick night of it.  Having surveyed the premises, I found a spot in the backyard that precluded seeing Orion but allowed for many other things, trees being quite the obstacle for many a celestial object there.  Hated missing the Orion Nebula, but was rewarded with enough targets to make things worth while, and we already knew we wouldn't be at this too long.

Got to use one of my favorite new Christmas gifts this evening, this Amazon laser pointer the Mrs got me after Michael Barnett kindly sent the url post last outing on the 8^th.  And oh man, the new laser pointer did not disappoint.  One of my old, lame, ancient ones can go to my work to successfully function as a sharp pointer in an auditorium setting, and my old, lame Orion one may be kept for possible backup summer use, too old for the cold.  I quickly pointed out Jupiter and Cassiopeia to Marcos.  Through the trees, I could barely note Polaris, although Castor and Pollux were more straighforward.

Staying with the Vixen Portamount from earlier in the day, I had set up my Long Perng 80mm F/6.9 refractor, an older brother of the current AstroTech, the AT80ED, tho mine is the color purple in a nice Stellarvue case.  The skies were not black, but gray due to our urban location and 13+ day old huge waxing gibbous moon.  Nothing could make the skies any darker, so mostly contented ourselves with targets more immune to light-bedeviled heavens.  I would be the last person to say the skies were steady, and there was probably plenty of turbulence in the atmosphere (it had been rather windy all afternoon and earlier in the evening), and the extreme turbulence we'd had on the 8^th had influenced my decision to observe with the AT80ED instead of a larger aperture scope.  There may be something to that smaller aperture, less sensitivity to turbulent air cells business bandied about on Cloudynights.com de temps en temps.  Anywho, I started things off with the Televue Nagler 7mm T6 in the focuser for a nice 78.6 power, Jupiter at culmination looking surprisingly good.  Optimus Maximus displayed several cloud belts clearly, the Great Red Spot even made out as it rotated off to the left, while Jove himself was bedecked by Ganymede farthest away, out to his left, Callisto just above like a juggler's ball, and Io and Europa somewhat closer than Ganymede on his right.  Check out S&T's screenshot from their Jupiter's Moons app on their site ...
    
Bear in mind all this was with a refractor, so my directions, like the S&T screenshot demonstrates, are influenced by a mirror-reversed perspective.  By this time Saturn was very low in the southwest, not even worth trying for.

For my second target, I tried in vain to summon the Andromeda family of galaxies via the TV Pan 24 from the ambivalent gray skies.  Giving up, I turned to a class of objects I have always enjoyed since my youth, different colored double stars, so moved the scope over to the relatively nearby Eta Cassiopeiae.  Thereafter I split the more dramatic Almach, Gamma Andromedae, an attractive interracial pair, gold-orange primary with blue-white secondary.

I was determined to find Andromeda, so into the focuser went the AT 28mm UWA.  In the AT80ED, one is rewarded with a generous 4.25° TFOV at 19.6 power, providing the widest field I can obtain at the lowest power using any of my telescopes.  The Andromeda Galaxy, M31, was quickly plucked from the light-blighted sky in this setup.  Not a lot of detail, of course, with this level of light pollution, only 80mm of aperture and less than 20 power, but Marcos and I could see it, cigar-shape and all, and on such a night, we'd take it — 2.2 million light years, blue shifted and larger than our own Milky Way possessing its own appeal.

I turned to the other side of the sky for a look at the famous double Castor --  ♩  People Look East  𝄢    Removing the two-inch AT28mm UWA, I re-installed the 2"-to-1¼" adapter and put back in the 7mm Nagler T6, returning to 78.6x and enough to split this attractive white pair, Alpha Geminorum.  Marcos seemed as delighted with this pair, too.

Well, back to the western skies and Cassiopeia, this time with the Pan 24 in the focuser for 23x and a 2.8° True Field of View.  Anyone who has seen Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cannot help but grin at NGC 457, the ET Cluster.  ET's charm floating freely in the refractor's view cannot be denied, his outstreched arms the embodiment of a sincere celestial welcome.  Earned a "That is sick!" from Marcos at the eyepiece.  In case you're not down with the latest colloquialisms, that means "very cool".  Pays to have a Middle and High Schooler in the house a veces.

Okay, it was cold, and we were getting close to the freezing point.  Marcos had two "big" coats on but was still cold — Austin, Texas 😐    My tight leather gloves which allow eyepiece manipulation while providing that nice layer of cowhide, Lands End thermal headband to keep the ears warm, long-sleeved t-shirt, heavy cotton pullover, wool sweater and thick down hunter's vest with high collar my father left me kept my upper body warm, but my simple blue jeans without longjohns had my legs on the chilly side.  My shoes weren't particularly winterized, either.  So we decided to end things on a bright note.

The moon was 13 days, 3 hours old, something like this.  And Luna puts on a show, huge as she was this Christmas night, 2023.  Almost overwhelming, I explained to Marcos why the moon is not a good target when full, and what the terminator is (rising or setting sun's horizon on a non-full moon) and how interesting it is at the eyepiece.  Only using the Pan 24, the moon a plethora of detail at any power, we bathed in her glory.  Capernicus and Tycho crater rays gleamed the spectacles they are, and I explained the maria and their origins.

Marcos was cold, so was I, and it was late.  All good things gotta come to an end, preferably before one freezes to death.  It is always an honor to share the night sky with a curious soul, and was blessed with the opportunity.  ¡Feliz Año Nuevo, amigos!