About a dozen of us set up 'scopes at Henry Coe's overflow parking lot last night, but we were all soon to be skunked by increasing cloud cover. Looking to the south, it appeared that Fremont Peak might be spared for a bit, but as night fell, it was a certainty that nobody in the Greater Bay Area was going to be in the clear for the evening. At Coe, nobody seemed willing to sacrifice a new telescope or eyepiece to the cloud gods -- even though I asked very politely that a new-item be brought forward. Okay, maybe not all *that* politely. <grin>
Following a quick view of Venus before it disappeared into a cloud band on the western horizon, the highlight of the short evening came early, with a few of us looking at C/1999 S4 LINEAR. Following the comet's perihelion breakup, this was probably my last chance to view the object. Using his 10" LX200, Ivor Barker was the first to spot LINEAR, close to a relatively bright star (~7th mag) on the border of Leo and C.B. With the twilight still with us, and more bands of clouds moving in, the comet took on the appearance of a long edge-on galaxy. No nucleus whatsoever, just a tail in the relatively bright sky. Maybe 9th magnitude or so. In such a bright sky, this was no longer a binocular item. Using my 12" LX200 and a 35mm Panoptic to run a quick comparison with NGC4565, the comet was definitely longer (~25'), and the image brighter -- but not by much. I'm curious to hear if others in darker skies were able to detect any sign of a nucleus, or if the tail actually extended further than I could see it. Anybody out there try imaging LINEAR is weekend?
The rest of the evening was spent chasing the brighter Messier/NGC items, looking at most of them through sucker-holes between cloud bands. Nilesh, Ivor and I spent some time looking at planetaries, passing around an O-III filter to blink some of the stellar ones, and finished up the evening with a few showcase items in Sagittarius and Scorpius. When the clouds finally wiped out the likes of M17, M20, and then M4 to the south, it was time to pack it in.
Wonderful people, warm temperatures -- and cloudy skies. Well, two out of three isn't bad ... but I'd have been willing to sacrifice the warm temperataures for clear skies. <grin>