Cloudy afternoon, clear night.
I checked at sunset yesterday (4:16 in the afternoon), and we had about 80% cloud cover, and I was tired from a busy day, and the kid is still buzzing from residual Halloween and Birthday excitement (making bedtime a trial), so I didn't set up my telescope. I had to run out to pick up supper, and of course by then the sky was beautiful and clear. I popped out on the deck with my 8x30 binoculars at about 8 to peek at Mars, and was able to make out that the Pleiades were rising above the roofline. Mars looks like a very bright, reddish, tiny circle in the binoculars. The Pleiades were hard to pick out to the naked eye, but filled the field of my binoculars very nicely. Unfortunately, I couldn't make out many other objects. Saturday nights a number of my neighbors like to entertain, so there are a lot of outside lights on in the evening. I think if I had tried later on in the night, or perhaps near morning, more of the outdoor lights in the neighborhood would have been off. If ...