what's joe up to...

We went out to Joshua Tree National Park last night to camp and use our Obsession 18" UC telescope. We set up camp in space B17 at the Cottonwood Springs campground where there were a few other astronomers there (Vernon with an 18" Starmaster and couple guys imaging with refractors). Heading across the parking lot to use the bathroom, we had a run in with a small rattlesnake that was crossing our path - that's the first time we have seen one in all the years we have been coming here. After getting the telescope and tent set up, we took a nap until it cooled off a bit around 11:30p. We started off watching the Jovian moon Io transit and cast a shadow onto Jupiter. The seeing was decent and it stayed warm (shorts weather) all night. We looked at a variety of deep sky objects and spent some time learning to use the Argo Navis pointing system. The seeing started to get worse around 3am (stars started twinkling and contrast was reduced) so we quit around 4:15am and went to sleep. It doesn't take long to for things to heat up in the desert as it was too hot to stay int the tent much later than 7:30am so we packed up and headed home. It was a great 4th of July weekend!