Unusually high turnout for a cloudy night
by Jim Hendrickson
John Leonelli and myself arrived under a mostly overcast sky, with only Jupiter and just barely the 3 point stars of the Summer Triangle visible through the high-level curtain tinted orange from the light pollution. This was one of those nights you wish for the Moon to be available as it can at least show some interesting detail in these conditions.
This was one of those nights we figured we'd hang around for 30 minutes and wait for conditions to improve and not receive any visitors. That would soon change, however, when a pair of students from Bryant University arrived with their extra credit assignment for their astronomy class. Soon more would arrive, as well as a student from Francine Jackson's astronomy class at Framingham State University. We entertained the group of about 8 in the front lawn for about 10 minutes, explaining some of the basic concepts of celestial coordinates and the ecliptic.As more arrived, however, we decided that since we can see Jupiter through the clouds, it might be worth a quick telescopic view. It turned out to be a good view, with Jupiter noticeably dimmed by the clouds, but the seeing was rock-steady. Bands and belts on Jupiter were prominent and detailed and the Galilean moons appeared as tiny disks.
We ended up closing more than 2 hours later having shown about 15 people the pleasure of observing Jupiter. I guess sometimes it is helpful to open on a partly cloudy night.
