After a day and a half of getting my gear together. Taking a telescope off off this mount, removing another telescope from its mount, then putting the first scope where the other one was, twice. Which doesn’t sound difficult, but it took literally 50 trips to the shop to get the right hardware figured out. Then testing each of my two solar setups to make sure they were ready. Then scouting out a good spot to shoot/view from, because my view to the west is compromised by trees. Then loading everything up and driving to scouted location and setting it all up…

The clouds rolled in just in time to wash me out completely.

That was my view. It did not improve. I was totally bummed out from the experience. But, as usual the internet is a great place to see what you may have missed. APOD has a great pic of the event here:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141025.html

To add insult to injury the clouds cleared out to become crystal clear skies not long afterward.

The next evening a friend of mine from Florida, a guy who bought one of my paralellogram mounts a while back, called to tell me there was a very new moon in close conjunction with Saturn that night. The same location for my missed eclipse was perfect for this new opportunity, sorry didn’t get any pics, but we were able to see both very close to the horizon and watched till they rolled out of view. This helped my mood a lot, having some success right after a huge failure got me back on track.

Got to take the wife for a follow up visit today to get the Frankenstein staples removed from here abdomen. She is much improved and getting around a lot better now. Still sore, still slow and carefull, but better.