Despite an iffy forecast for the summits, I tried to get one more night of observing in. This time, I had arranged to meet a work colleague at the Kaohe site.
Kaohe is lower down than I typically would choose due to clouds, but it has one big advantage: wind protection. It is behind Maunakea as far as our typical trade wind pattern is concerned and it has a line of trees which provide protection from what wind does get through. With the wind being a potential problem, that was where we went.
At sunset, the skies directly above were clear, but there were towering clouds all around. It looked like the clouds were receding, not building, so I set up and was eventually rewarded with completely clear skies.
The night ended up being a small star party. A total of 3 couples plus myself were there, spaced out given the everpresent coronavirus threat. It was nice observing with people, but it was also very strange to not share views as one normally would at a star party. I look forward to a time when that will be normal again.
Conditions were ok. It was humid early in the night, presumably we were not above the inversion layer. I think there was also a significant boundary layer not far above us because the seeing was absolutely dreadful. Looking at planets was like trying to see things at the bottom of a moving stream. It did improve later on though.
I started the night looking at planets in twilight, and that's how I discovered the terrible seeing. I moved on to a few bright DSOs (M13, M57, M27) and took a quick look at Neptune which appeared as a slightly bluish star given the seeing conditions.
Since I'd viewed Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune at this point (with Mars a prominent target for later), I thought I'd hit the other bright planet out tonight: Uranus. I had fun picking in out with the naked eye first before turning the telescope on it to see a small blue disk, though quite blurry with the early evening seeing.
By that time, it was fully dark, so I started working on my main target list for the night which was simply every galaxy, planetary nebula, globular cluster, bright nebula, and quasar brighter than 12th magnitude in Cetus. This was an easy list to autogenerate in Sky Safari and I'd never explored Cetus much, so I thought it would be a good project. Over the course of the night I managed to collect all 40 objects in this list. A few of the Cetus galaxies were very challenging due not to their faintness, but to the large size (and thus low surface brightness).
There were also a few gems of course. M77 is a nice face on galaxy which I'd observed before, but some less well known objects were also fun to (re)discover. This included NGC 246 (the "Skull Nebula") a lare planetary nebula which revealed patchy detail in the interior with my 152mm Stellarvue refractor and also NGC 908, a large edge on galaxy.
I interrupted the parade of small faint galaxies in Cetus to observe Mars as it transited. By this time, the seeing had improved. The clouds had long disappeared and the catabatic winds were starting to roll down the mountain and rustle the line of trees just upslope of the observing site. This usually signals better seeing conditions at Kaohe and that was true again tonight. Plenty of dark markings were visible on the surface along with the polar cap and some limb haze. The details weren't as good as I'd seen in some of my previous Mars observing sessions, but they were still quite satisfying.
After finishing out my Cetus list, I packed up. The winds had increased and I was the only one left by this time. All in all it was a gorgeous night with good darkness (SQM of 21.6) and beautiful views of Hualalai and Mauna Loa silhouetted against the night sky. Toward the end we could see some clouds building behind Hualalai which developed in to a lightning storm. We could see occasional bright flashes outlining the Western slope of the mountain. It was a dramatic finish to the night.