Headed out to Joshua Tree National Park with the telescopes last night. We got to the Cottonwood Springs campground before sunset, but both the A and B loop sites were full so we drove down to the nearby trail head parking lot and set up there. Unfortunately you can't camp here so we would have to drive home after we were done.
We set up the telescopes (Obsession 18" UC and TeleVue NP101) and watched the crescent moon as it set over the nearby mountain ridge. It was really neat watching the dark part of the moon moving behind the mountain as it was barely lit up by the Earth shine.
The night started out great, Saturn was cool with its rings nearly edge-on, then tried to make out the Horsehead Nebula but it was to far down and into the sky glow from the Palm Springs area. Looked at M51 (Whirlpool galaxy), then on to galaxy cruising in the Virgo Cluster. M61 and M104 (Sombrero Galaxy) were the highlights.
By then, high wispy clouds were moving in from the southwest so we looked at M13 (Hercules Cluster) since it had come up not too much earlier and by then, you could barely make out the Big Dipper so we packed p and drove home.
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