--- RichardN22@No-Spam wrote:
> Did anyone go out observing last night (Friday)?
> How was it?
>
> Richard
>
It started out with lots of smoke just east of
palo alto... when I went up the hill to
montebello, I was surprised to see smoke
up there also... however the smoke was really
thick in the valley -- the east bay hills
were barely visible.
As expected, by nightfall stars were barely
visible at montebello. Mars was ok though.
As the night went on, the marine layer obviously
came in and it got pretty dark up there. Also,
it appeared that smoke had subsided as the
milky way was coming through with its usual
montebello "good night" stature.
By the time "last call" (closing time) came
around it was getting to be a fantastic
night. It started out with pretty high suck
factor and ended with very low suck factor.
There was a bit of traffic in and out (maybe
a total of five cars) during the night, and
a few tourists (and maybe a couple folks that
posted earlier on the list).
In addition to mars we managed deepsky views
here and there -- mostly the bright stuff M17,
M13, M31, etc... I ended the night with a nice
low power view (25x) of the veil waterfall in the
4" refractor.
jeff