by John R Pierce
I went up to the Santa Cruz Astronomy Clubs usual haunts, the Bonny Doon Airport on Empire Grade around midnight. It was stunningly clear, with some of the best seeing I've seen up there. I didn't bother to bring my ol' C8, but other club members had several scopes setup. Our reflector-tape-on-black 'SCAC' sign out by the road pulled an amazing number of folks in who were driving by looking for good viewing spots.
Meteorite-wise things really started cooking around 2am. While we saw nothing that could be considered a flat out meteor 'storm', we certainly saw more meteors in the next 90 minutes or so than any of us had *ever* seen on a single night, with many large slow ones leaving trails that were still visible sometimes a minute later(!!). Some lit the ground.
We had some *stunning* scope views of Jupiter and Saturn, with hardly a trace of turbulence at powers up around 300X.