One final note on this thread from li'l old me: I was also struck by the very different mean magnitudes I was seeing on different nights prior to max: on Aug 6/7 I had SPOR=3.09, PER=1.90. But on Aug 10/11 it was SPOR=1.92, PER=2.38! Obviously not statistically significant for just two short samples, but that's still quite a variance... Clear skies, PS: BTW, Wes, I'm one of those envious observers Marco talks about! :) Lew