HVAG needs you, came the call. Big dedication ceremony at Grant Ranch Park, lots of public expected, etc. So, load up me, Sally, both scopes and off we go.

Not a soul showed up except astronomers, of whom there were a goodly number. About 10 telescopes, as I recall, but I didn't get around much until later and by then several had left so I could have easily missed some.

Started the evening by seeing about the seeing. Jupiter looked like it was made of rubber and bouncing everywhere. Saturn was much better. In fact, Saturn (a good deal higher up and not in a direction over the heat plume rising from San Jose) was promising enough that I dug out the new (to me) 5mm Takahashi LE eyepiece. Not bad. In the atmosphere's steadier moments, I could see Cassini's division all the way around, though more often it was visible only on the 'elbows'. Banding on Saturn was also fairly evident.

What to do tonight? I'd been expecting to do lots of favorites for the crowd, but there was no crowd. So I decided to tour Perseus instead. I started with Double Cluster, always a fine view. Then I decided to go after open clusters, starting at alpha-Perseus. First attempts were made at Kg5, but no luck. Per Burnham, this is a mag. 13 cluster, so with the fairly bright sky we had (the Milky Way was only visible to Cygnus and washed out by the San Jose light dome beyond that to the west. Elsewhere it was rather dimly evident) it seemed like a losing proposition. Tried for 1220 in the same vicinity. It may have been there, but wasn't terribly evident either. Back to alpha-Pers and thence over to 1245 but had a hard time picking it out of the Milky Way. There was a small galaxy shown nearby, 1169, but that was definitely not showing up. Took a jog to see if the California Nebula was visible, trying with an O-III filter but no luck. Headed for M34, and not finding some other small (in the star atlas) galaxies along theway. M34 was there to buoy up my nothing-found spirits. Off again, this time going for 891, which is somewhat larger in extent than the other galaxies and is edge-on, so I hoped it might have a little more surface brightness. Nothing. Heading on, I sneaked over the border into Triangulum (another never before visited spot) and hunted for M33. Couldn't find it, either, but this turned out to be because I got my stars wrong and was looking where it wasn't. Oops. More on M33 later.

This evidently being Fail-to-Find-the-Galaxy night, I marched over into Andromeda to look up M31 and break the curse. Yes, it was there, and very nicely. Also evident were M32 and 205. As I usually do, I looked at M31 for a good, long time. Glorious sight.

About this time, my eyes were watering. So I took a rest and walked around. I'd expected to find lots of other things to sneak a peek at, but many had already packed up. It was cold, and many of us were still operating in California summertime mode, hadn't brought enough warm stuff, and had retreated. I had on almost full regalia (everything but the double gloves) by the end of the night. One fellow with DSC's on his fork-mount C8 was surprised to hear I couldn't find M33, so he went and found it. It wasn't terrifically obvious, but was there as a slightly whiter patch. I did notice that the star field did NOT look like what I'd been staring at before, and made a mental note to myself to go back and try again. He also tried for 891, but it really had taken the night off.

Back to my own scope. Back to alpha-Triangulum. Go to that pair of stars...yes...then on to those...Ah! That was the mistake. When I put the scope on the nearer one of the second pair, instead of the further, why there was M33! And it seemed a little more evident than before, so maybe 891 might just be visible?? This time I came at 891 from gamma-Andromeda, and discovered that gamma-And is quite a beautiful double star with a gold to blue-green contrast. There'd been some discussion of gamma-And. on the net, which is part of why I went this way on the star hop, but nobody had mentioned the colors. It is quite as nice as Albireo, but doesn't seem to get the publicity. Anyway, back to 891. Nope, still not there. So I sneaked over the border again and went to look at the Pleiades. They were still there, and really fine as always.

Now about this time, only three of us were left:me, the other C8, and a great big 17" dob. The latter fellow was in a mood to find 891, having never seen it before, but he didn't know where it was. So I got to starhop a dob, and frankly, its quite different moving that large beast than a C8 on a GP mount. Anyway, once the star field was in view, we both looked and maybe, juuuust maybe there was a verrrrry faint patch of whiter sky there. It seemed to move with the rest of the field if you jiggled the scope, but we couldn't always see it. Probably was 891 but neither of us was certain.

And on that mild note of success, we all packed it in for the evening.