alright it is wednesday, feb.27, 2008, and i am going to go brave the outside. It is 15 deg. outside but the weather channel said it feels like 5. The weather is somewhat cloudy right now but the reports say its going to clear up somewhat to just be partly cloudy. At this point i dont care, i will brave the cold and the partly cloudy just for some views of saturn and some wonderful sky objects. I really hope that the clouds can just part a little bit? plz clouds. Right now i have my scope all set up in the garage just cooling and now i am going to wait. Hopefully none of u are having this problem but im sure if ur in the northern part of the U.S. then u are. I will be sure to update if i can get some good observing in. Best luck to u all!  

well it looks like the clouds were not in my favor, so guess who is waking up at 4 in the morning because that just want to use their scope that much. Yep will post later in the day tomorrow to report

so definatly went out at 4:00 am today, it was about 5 deg. outside and barely lit with moonshine for it was so low on the horizon. I got my scope all set up and started the night out with view the "double double" in lyra. With a scope with a 1000mm focal length and a 4x eyepiece i could easily break apart the 4 stars. I am going to have to say that with an EQ mount a dual axis motor is a must!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so happy that this forum talked me into buying one with my scope, best move ever. I have the Zhumell 1.25 inch eyepiece and filter kit, which is wonderful, and it definatly made observing with the wide range of eyepieces nice. From 32mm to 4mm, it is quite the combo. After the double double i went on to albireo in cygnus. Seeing was about 2/5 so it wasnt to good, but still ok. The ring nebula was a site as it always is, once again the dual axis drive =) Polar aligning my scope was alot easier than i thought it was going to be. I was ontop a giant pile of snow (haha good old wisconsin) so i will have to realign my scope once i actually get flat ground. When i was viewing the ring nebula i was getting out my 32mm to find it and instead of flipping the mitten cover of my gloves back i just decided to use my teeth just as a ledge to pop of the EP cover, bad idea. When i was flipping of the cover my toungue decided to help out to and little did i know it i was living the flag pole scene of the christmas story. Luckly i could quick rip it off, but it still hurts. Im pretty sure my hand were exposed to the metal pieces of my scope a little to long because they have a stinging feeling haha. Oh well, waking up at 3:45 and being out by 4 in the morning for the first time was quite an expierence. And just the chance to see a glimpse of the summer triangle again just reminded me of summer and the fun times that are to come once the weather gets better.

Any of you have winter observing stories?