Last night (Saturday) about a dozen or so telescopes showed up at the Gravel Pit just East of Park City. In spite of some frustratingly increasing skyglow to the West (thanks in part to all the stupid lighting practices in Utah and SLC counties) the sky was clear and we were treated to some good seeing. I knocked off another 14 Herschel-400 objects in Saggitarius, Scutum, Ophiuchus, Hydra, Libra and Serpens (I know, I was working in the soupy part of the sky for the most part). I only have 6 more Summer/Fall objects unfortunately, and I'm only a little more than halfway (205 at last count), because that means the rest are Winter and Spring objects, and you know how many clear nights we have at that time of the year. Most of the objects I observed were small globular clusters. Notable was NGC 6553, a rectangular cluster in Sagittarius of uniform brightness set in a beautiful background star field at 115x (22 Nagler). Another was NGC 6712, a GC in Scutum, a cluster with some resolvable stars with others that dim to "nebulosity" (in a 16-inch scope anyway) also set in a very rich, lovely star field. The challenges for me last night were NGC 6629, a fairly bright yet small Planetary that took more magnification to really see that it wasn't just some out of focus star (also in Sagittarius). The other was a rather large galaxy in Serpens, NGC 6118. I know, wrong time of year to observe this object, as it is very low surface brightness and needs the contrast of darker skies when it's higher in the sky. I very nearly missed it. Other highlights of the evening came from veteran observer Lowell Lyon and his 20-inch f/5 Obsession. He treated us to some marvelous views of the Crescent Nebula, the Veil (stunning in his 40mm Pentax with the O-III filter), and even the rather obscure and faint ghostly-bubble "Jones-1" Planetary Nebula. I was also treated in other telescopes to the 2 bright comets that are up in the evening (can't remember the names) in Ursa Major and Bootes. Thanks to those who showed for the good time and the great company. -Rich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com