Kurt, on no, I have no hard feelings at all about anybody in the astronomy game! Especially not about you, as you're one of the great resources.  I was just startled by what happened -- it's because our particular location had a lot of snow, which kept sublimating during the day so that the air was full of humdity. I failed to notice the moisture until the night turned really cold and the stuff just crystallized out of the air. I'm thinking about doing a blog about it because it was such an odd experience. Usually in the desert I never think about dew. Best wishes, Joe --- On Wed, 2/4/09, Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote: From: Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Non-Observing report - Moon passes Pleiades To: "Utah Astronomy List Serv" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 12:24 PM Joe, LOL - very humorous description of wrestling with your gear.  We've all been there.  I often wrestle with the question of what is the best scope to pull out - the complex light bucket with lot's of setup time or the small manual scope.  I hope there's no hard feelings based on my recommendation.  I was using 35x (20mm on 700 mm f/l) and 77x (9mm) in the small 60mm refractor.  I would guess 8x or 5x in the 50mm finder didn't darken the sky at sunset enough to give the Pleiaden stars enough contrast to be visible.  The moral of the story is sometimes the bigger high cost tool isn't always the best tool for the job.  A simple hammer drives a nail just as well at the electric air pump powered nail gun. No frost or dew on concrete in the Aves.  Where do you live - a bog? -:) - Kurt _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com