Me and Rob, Rob and I, Rob and Me... arghhh! I went to Wolf Creek last night and so did Rob. There we found an absolutely beautiful sky. There was a herd of sheep about 100 yards from where I wanted to set up the telescope but a couple of quick blasts in the air from my 12 gauge turned them back. ;) Just kidding... There seemed to be twice as many stars in the Milky Way than usual. The wind blew like hell and the temperature was about 20 degrees before figuring in the wind chill. I kept telling Rob that the wind would subside after the Sun went down and the evening thermals cease. I really didn't want to be a meteorologist anyway. 11:30 PM the winds were really kicking. Wind chill by now had to be 5-10 degrees. Gotta love "go-to" scopes on nights like these. Punch in coordinates, press go-to and get back in the truck with the heater on high. Jump out long enough to have a look, press the button again and back in the truck where it's warm. I'm seriously considering trying Meade's new "Deep Space Imager". Last night sitting in the warmth of the truck while my telescope slewed perfectly from target to target while I stayed nice and toasty got me thinking how great modern technology has become. I think it would be cool, I mean neat, on nights like these, to simply run a cable out the back of the truck and kick back with a laptop and thermos of coffee. With the cold wind rocking the truck I couldn't help but wonder how long it will be before someone comes out with a scope that will tear down and pack itself up. I have to say that at one point it got so cold that I was tempted to drive off and just leave the damned thing there. Oh sure, I wondered about a lot of things, like, how long the external battery supply would last in that cold? Would it continue tracking, eventually pointing to China? If it fell over with no one around, would it make a sound? As I was ready to pull away, I noticed there below Capella, a familiar reddish/green flashing pulsar. Peering through the binoculars I soon discovered it to be the NGC object I had seen earlier over in Scorpio, Yup, NGC 747. ;) Oh yeah, on the way out there was no sign of the sheep but there was poop all over the place. I hope I didn't scare that out of them... Just kidding. Perhaps next time some of you who are bored out of your minds, or, out of work would like to join me. If so, give me a shout. Stargazing in the middle of the week is pretty cool... I mean, pretty neat. P.S. For all the Anti-technology folks out there who think Star Charts and Telrads rule, I do have a 12" Dob, but on nights like this, It would be futile trying to do anything. However, I would have felt a lot better about driving off and leaving the Dob behind. ;)