by Stacy Jo McDermott
I arrived around 7 PM and the parking lot hardly had any cars. The sun was out and I noticed the marine layer skimming around MB.
Soon afterward, Dennis, Jeff, William, Adam Melia had joined the party - as well as a thicker marine layer!
Having set up our various photon gathering apparatuses (apparati?) we knew we were in for a wait for the marine layer to clear. And we waited, and waited and waited. Finally, Adam and Melia headed out - the sacrificial action to clear the sky?! While it was sad to see them go, on the other hand it might just do the trick.
So we waited, and waited and waited. Jeff brought his green laser and every so often pointed it into the marine layer bank that surrounded us. Seemed that the beam was more pronounced as the minutes ticked on.
Finally at one point, I decided to tear down my telescope in hopes that the action would help with clearing this stuff up. Dennis had the same idea. William, on the other hand, had a 14 inch SC so having him to tear down minutes after he got everything working just didn't seem fair.
Having packed up my telescope, indeed, it looked like things were starting to clear. Dennis continued on as well with the packing up motionsand within a half hour, voila! we had a clear sky. Since I had my binoculars handy, Jeff and I found the comet going through just left of Procyus. WOW!!! Pretty stunning stuff.
Dennis had opted to put back his OTA on his mount and as soon as he was finished, the marine layer socked us in again. Hmmm, seems to be a pattern here. So he went through the motions of taking it down, putting it up, taking it down finally.
While it was a tad disappointing that we had to play games with the marine layer, it was a good night, with good company and at least one window of a few minutes of good observing.
Posted on sf-bay-tac May 08, 2004 10:27:15 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 11, 2004 12:33:22 PT