by Bob Czerwinski
Conditions at Fremont Peak State Park were fine for observing last night. Just four of us at the SW lot: Jeff Crilly (taking film shots), David Kingsley, Jay Freeman and Yours Truly. Fog in down below, much more encroaching and extensive than on Wednesday night. As a result, the humidity was up much higher, and temperatures were a bit on the cool side. The normal'ish light-breeze to start with, but this dropped off - as expected - around sunset. Even with the fog in, the overall sky was brighter than on Wednesday night, but I didn't perform any star counts. One of the other gents may have an idea about limiting magnitude. Up 'til about Moonrise or so, the temperature remained in the low 50's, with the humidity about 90~93%, if my RadioShack temp/humid indicator is to be trusted. Fog filled in the area all around The Peak; from the SW lot you could see it filling the valley to the SE, but Coulter remained clear. About Moonrise (I think), the temperature rose into the low 60's, the fog pulled back a bit, and the humidity dropped into the low 70-percent range. (Ah, the wonders of The Peak!) I didn't pay much attention to the time, so Jeff, David and/or Jay may have better details on this. For most of the evening, everything exposed to the air gathered moisture, however, my optics - and I believe those of everybody else - remained clear throughout the evening.
Jeff and I were the last two to leave the SW lot. While all four of us were packing up, fog started moving upwards and inwards again, with the temperature dropping accordingly. For those of you interested, at 3:50am, a light fog finally hit the SW lot, but pulled back a bit just a minute or two later - as predicted by Jeff - leaving the SW lot clear again. Jeff and I headed down the hill just after 4:00am, and I hit the fog-line after a guesstimated 200-feet elevation drop. The fog remained extensive until I was about 3/4 of the way down, when I broke out of it. Hit ground-fog just about the time I reached San Juan Batista.
Seeing was not as good as on Wednesday. Started off relatively soft, but improved pretty quickly. On and off through the evening - not bad, mind you - but not the constant steadiness of Wednesday evening. I was hunting some fairly faint galaxies with my 12.5-inch Newt/Dob, and often spent quite a bit of time at the eyepiece, waiting for that quick moment of "perfect seeing" to confirm a galaxy-core siting or that a faint patch of haze was truly there.
Bottom line: I'm very glad I mad the trip. I was a bit wishy-washy before heading south, but the drive from San Jose was well worth the effort. Wish more people had come this way.
Comet Hoenig (C/2002 O4): No real tail (yet), but this baby really moves! Spotted it about
12:30am this morning (Aug 3rd), centered directly on top of SAO 35125, a
9th mag. star in Cassiopeia (RA: 23h 04m 35.57s Dec: +54°01'36.14" -
Epoch 2000). Had to wait for the comet to move slightly off the star to
verify that what I was seeing wasn't just an artifact of the bright
star/humidity.