a couple good nights

Thursday and Friday nights turned out very well.  I observed with the 8-inch and gained some traction on the Stellar Evolution and Carbon Star lists -- a nice feeling to make progress. 

Both nights featured views of Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn during the astronomical twilight.  Thursday features a GRS transit of Jupiter; it seems to ride on the SWB.  Saturn's Cassini division was well seen, along with four moons each night.  Thursday was cut short by marine layer.  Some scraps of it started to fly through Scorpius so I changed observe in Lyra and Hercules.  I was just about to make my observation of AC Herculis after a long hop from Beta Lyrae, and after checking the chart looked back in the eyepiece and found it totally clouded out.  Otherwise, very good conditions.  All observations at 184x.  I had a couple non-list observations, too:

Gliese 581 = HO Lib, red dwarf in Libra: Small, faint, slightly red.  20 light years away, a red dwarf with 4 or more planets, intensively studied for habitable planets.  Has a debris disk providing 10x the comets as our system

18 Scorpius: Unremarkable yellow-white star.  45.3 light years distant, shares many characteristics with sun.  Good candidate for hosting planets with life, but none yet discovered

Antares = Alpha Scorpius: Bright shimmering red-orange.  No companion seen.  Red giant; one of the largest and brightest observable stars; 883x radius of Sun.

Zeta Ophiuchi: Pretty, brilliant white star.  Aged only 3m years, but will expand to red giant in a few million years and go supernova.  It has high velocity and NASA has imaged it creating a bow shock in an interstellar dust cloud

Rasalgethi = Alpha Herculis: Beautiful orange yellow A with a closely split much fainter greenish B.  A is a asymptotic giant branch star, with both helium and hydrogen shells around a degenerate carbon-oxygen core.  400x the sun, it is experiencing rapid mass loss.  B has its own pair, not seen

Barnard's Star = HIP87937: ordinary, faint, slightly red.  Low mass red dwarf 6 light years from earth.  EE Barnard measured its proper motion as 10.3" per year.  7-12 billion light years old, among the oldest in the Milky Way.

Vega = Alpha Lyrae: Brilliant white; said to be a double.  25 light years away; was the northern pole star in 12,000 BC.  1/10th the age of the sun but will only live 1/10th the time; it will become a planetary nebula in about 500 million years.

RR Lyrae: ordinary, 8-9th magnitude, a little yellow-white.  Brightest of its type of variable stars which serve as standard candles to measure stellar distances

Albireo = Beta Cygni: Astonishingly beautiful gold (A) and blue (B), in a rich field of stars.  First view this season, wow.  430 light years distant; 35" separation; not known if physical pair.  A has a confirmed 0.4" pair, too close to see. 

Sigma Draconis: Pretty yellow-white.  18.8 light years away, has a high proper motion of 1.825" per year. 

Altair = Alpha Aquilae: very bright brilliant white.  16.7 light years distant.  Rotates very rapidly, more than half its break-up speed, bulging its equator.  It is a multiple system with four components, two of which are gravitationally bound to A; I didn't notice any of them.

η Eta Aqlilae: Light yellow ordinary star.  Cepheid variable, ranges from 3.5 to 4.3 over 7.17 days -- have to watch this one!

Epsilon Draconis: Very pretty bright yellow A and ~4 magnitudes fainter, close but split white B.  Probably an optical pairing.  3.2" separation 4.0 mag A, 6.9 B

K Draconis: Bright white with a dim yellow B, large magnitude difference, well split. 

V Ophiuchi: carbon star: Very red, fairly bright; seen in finder.  Est. 8.0 C6 [AAVSO 7.5, C5-7]

TW Ophiuchi: carbon star: Very deep orange; makes a triangle with other stars but otherwise a star poor area.  Est. 7.0, C5.  AAVSO N/A C5

SZ Sagittarii, carbon star: Faint red-to-orange in a string of four stars -- also makes a triangle with other stars.  Est. 8.5, C6.  AAVSO N/A, C7

FO Serpentis, carbon star: Very faint, whitish yellow  In a wide triangle of brighter stars.  Est. 8.5, C2 [AAVSO N/A, 8.5-8.7, C4]

AC Herculis, carbon star: Very faint, white with a little orange.  Est. 6.0 C1 [AAVSO 7.5 6/20/16, C0)

I thought I was finished with the carbon star list, but after sorting out my file today find I have two I thought I observed but for which I don't have the documentation.  They are both up in the sky now, so I should be able to finish the list, maybe tonight.