George asked about dates:

The star party at McDonald Observatory was the night of Saturday, Dec 3, making the Marfa date Sunday, Dec 4.

Both the moon and Venus were in the southwest (fairly high in the sky), and in fact that was a very pretty sight. The moon was a waxing crescent with Venus appearing just to the west of it.

Again, we were viewing the "lights" more to the south-south east. Both the night at McDonald and at Marfa were very clear -- good seeing.

The full moon around Dec 15 did sort of spoil one of the programs I gave while at the Castolon Visitor Center...but folks did get to see M42 and one or two other objects.

GeorgieB