Mars is at it's closest approach to Earth tomorrow (18th). Today it was cloudy and rainy...even a little sleet! Around 8 o'clock tonight, the skies started to clear and there were some clouds hovering above the southern horizon. (Here in the northwest, the weather usually comes from the south or west). After monitoring the sky, using my all-sky camera, I decided to take a chance and set up my small (5") telescope and maybe get some video of the red planet.
I hustled to set up the scope, level and align it, point at Mars, set up the camera, laptop computer, focus. Ten minutes later, those seemingly benign clouds blew in and the sky was almost completely clouded over. No video. Oh, well. And on top of that, the forecast is for rain all this week! Oh, well. There's always next week....maybe.