Full Resolution And we've moved off the field! It's a clear, still, and moonless night, and we have a great telescope and some huge skies, so let's go observing! We're on the Magellanic Clouds now. Saturn was huge and beautiful. We saw Venus as it was rising, as low as it possibly could be -- probably half a degree from the horizon, and going through a crazy rainbow of colors. (And we knew from experience that if that primary mirror hadn't fallen out yet, it was glued in solidly enough that tilting it to the horizon wasn't an issue...).
It's rare to see Mercury, but here, it was bright and easy, about 5 degrees up.
Our security group -- all four of them -- got a kick out of seeing everything... they've worked with a lot of groups before, but never astronomers.
