Short visual sessions from Solana Beach

We spent the week in Solana Beach with a balcony facing the ocean and no lights between us and the bluff unlike last year. Unfortunately the light pollution is quite pronounced and made worse by all the water vapor in the air. A lot of evenings and mornings had actual fog or smog.

I brought my 7x50 binoculars and the rental also had a couple of binoculars and a 70mm refractor with 800mm FL, a 12.5mm eye piece with a very narrow AFOV and a red dot finder.

Few stars were visible if any e.g. I could visually see Cygnus but not Hercules. Without a finder scope it was impossible to aim the telescope except for the brightest targets (Moon, Jupiter). The last evening and morning had the best seeing but with a lot of passing clouds.

Observations (evening):

• Moon (small crescent all the way to first quarter) with the refractor and the binoculars
• Double double in Lyra (just seeing the main double of course) only through the binoculars

Observations (morning):

• Jupiter and its four moons: could see the two bands in the refractor
• M42 Orion Nebula with the binoculars
• M45 Pleiades - Taurus with the binoculars
• C41 Hyades - Taurus with the binoculars

Moon in Sagittarius
NB: could not see the stars with the naked eyes

Moon using Pixel 6 Pro zoom