A beautiful night with friendly visitors

After weather caused us to cancel the September and October Public Nights at Stephens Memorial Observatory of Hiram College, it was a pleasure to behold beautiful skies tonight! The first visitors arrived just before 7:00 PM as we were just opening. The waxing crescent Moon was down among neighboring trees but their bare limbs allowed a few minutes of lunar viewing that we did not expect. As others arrived we turned the big telescope towards the east and the brilliant Pleiades star cluster (M45). During the evening I believe we were able to make out traces of nebulosity around a couple of the stars -- the "Seven Sisters" were beautiful to see. Like diamonds scattered on black velvet, the stars of the Perseus Double Cluster shown through the eyepiece. We couldn't fit both clusters within the field of view so the telescope was pointed at the brilliant center of one. Jupiter rose steadily and, with a little ladder-climbing, we were able to observe the gas giant through most of the evening. Observing conditions were not ideal through, remarkably, we were able to make out three and sometimes four cloud belts in the planet's atmosphere! All four Galilean moons were visible during our session. Conditions did not support 200X magnification so we stayed at about 120X. In the same area of sky as Jupiter was the double-binary star system of Capella; a brilliant reddish dot, twinkling in the eyepiece. As the last visitors were leaving, we stood on the front lawn and looked up. One guest said she saw two meteors -- likely late-arriving Leonids -- though I saw none. I pointed out that we could make out the glowing patch of sky that is the Double Cluster without the use of binoculars or telescope ... seeing was that good! It was a very enjoyable night sharing the night sky with a friendly group of visitors.