t’s been since August that I had the scope out. A lot of stuff happened – a trip to Japan, a hernia operation (and the recovery), then two friends in hospitals (with tri-weekly visits) until just recently. And closing out a career. And everything else.

With the dark skies event coming up this Friday/Saturday, I’ve been thinking I need to tune up the scope, to make sure I remembered how to do this from a half-year ago (before I do it out in some field in the dark). And while I dusted my Orion off, I discovered the laser sight was dead. Switching the batteries knocked it off true. Okay, I needed to tune it up.

Got home tonight and it was mostly clear. ClearDarkSky.com ranked it as “feh” because of clouds. Yeah, a couple of poofies but I might be able to work around it.

Got everything set up and sighted Sirius – like, how could you miss that one? Got the finder and scope to agree, and a little more work got the laser locked. Got out my astronomy chair and sat down and enjoyed basking in a great bunch of white. Yes, a cloud had rolled over and more were on the way.

Still, it was a nice night. Lined up one where the Orion nebula should be and was finally rewarded with a view through my 24mm eyepiece. And there it was, my favorite spot in the heavens, all ablaze with glowing gasses. Switched over to the 10mm for an even closer view and…

White out.

Pulling back from the eyepiece, I found nothing but clouds overhead. Pretty much a wash out; not even sucker holes.

And that sucked.

But what sucked even more was when I was carrying my stuff back in. Went out for the last of it and the finicky clouds had mostly cleaned again.

No thanks. Enough was enough.

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