First Astronomy Post Since 2005!

I stopped logging my astronomy sessions a few years back. It was was such a beautiful dark sky when I got home at 7pm I couldn't resist setting up the scope. My criteria for a dark sky was met: I could detect Andromeda with the naked eye! NOt bad for an object 2,500,000 light years away (well, of course, it IS an entire galaxy)! Even better - I nailed it on the first try! Got it in thr view finder and had it centered in the scope!! Next I looked at Pleiades. Meh. No nebular cloudiness so - kinda boring tonight. I was able to split the binary star in Cynus with low power. I've never done that before. Jupiter was not too interesting either. Even with a dark green filter I had to use my imagination to see one equatorial band. I detected and viewed a large open cluster down and to the left of Cygnus. I don't remember that that was. Tried to view the Ring Nebula in Vega with low power to no avail. I think there was a lot of moisture in the sky and the horizons in every direction were washed out with light. It didn't used to be that bad out here. The city folk moving out here are scared of the dark and leave lots of flood lights on. Ever since they paved the road it's gotten worse! :-)