Our night began at dusk when our caravan stopped off Interstate 20 on the Camp Road exit.  Upon our arrival we were soon greeted by a passover of the International Space Station.  WOW!  The station appeared to come out of the northwest and was a very bright and fast moving "spot" in the sky.  It was viewable for approximately two minutes before sinking below the southeast horizon.

We gathered back up in our five car wagon train to Scott Dickson's home near Eros south of Calhoun.  Scott led us to a nearby hay field which had excellent viewing.  All in all, eleven amateur astronomers with three telescopes gathered in a hay field to observe the heaven's above.  Unfortunately, we were viewing under a very bright full moon; but, we were taking advantage of a clear night, something not recently observed.

Even under the bright conditions we were able to see objects not yet before seen by our group.  Of course, the usual objects:  Saturn, Great Orion Nebula, and Andromeda were on the "get aquainted" list.  However, we turned our attention to some unexplored deep sky objects.  After Todd Coble and myself figured out how to get the computer portion of the 12" LX-200 scope to operate, we were punching numbers into the computer at will.  The scope performed nearly perfectly.  We still have to work on the fine focus drive and photo adapters, but hey, we made some strides forward.

We were able to view many galaxies and globular clusters.  Other than the Orion nebula, other nebulae still elude us because of the bright sky conditions.  Just before we packed it in, I remembered reading where Uranus was visible.  So I punched up the computer, the scope whirred to life and spun around to the lower western sky.  I took a quick peek into the viewfinder and there it was.  A greenish dot!  I now have only two planets not yet observed - Neptune and Pluto.

Below are some pics taken in infrared mode (that's why they are green).  Soon some pics of planets will be posted......