The evening of 23 March was showtime in the celestial arena. I and my wife and two friends went up to a moderately dark site in the Santa Cruz mountains above San Jose (Ca) and took in the eclipse and Hale-Bopp, among some other things. Also present were two astrophotographers taking an eclipse sequence with the clubs dome-mounted 16".

We set up the C8 at the comet, Bill's 114mm reflector at the moon, and passed the binocs. around for wider views of both events.

The comet was strikingly visible even before twilight faded. Once it got "dark" (the partially eclipsed moon was still pretty bright) the tail was quite a sight even naked eye and went out of the 5-degree view of the binocs. The C8 was showing 4 bow waves on the comet, but I could not see any jets that were obvious. Focusing was tough...it was necessary to go and find a star, focus on that, then go back to the comet and resist strongly the temptation to refocus the "fuzz".

The moon turned out to be a better deal in binoculars than with a scope. There was a more dramatic dark/light difference, so it seemed, in the binocular view than in either scope view. We got a little bit of a light show when the moon was rising through some thin, wispy clouds. The golden sphere among the silvery tendrils was just glorious to look at, one of the few times that clouds have been an astronomical asset (hmmm, I haven't violated some taboo here, I hope).

Ogling of these two went on for some time...

Neither of the two friends had ever seen a nebula or galaxy in a scope before. So before we left, I was able to show them M97, M42, and M108. The Orion nebula achieved significant wow factor. The other two showed more as grey spots on dark grey background (those high wispy clouds were lurking near the dipper although I didn't see any in the FOV directly).

Sunday night being followed by a work day, we had to leave fairly early. One good benefit that came out of this was that Bill, who bought his scope on a whim, has now become convinced that joining the local astro. club is a great idea and plans to do so. Also, the spouse (who I've been trying to suck into observing with no great success) was having fun although she is not especially happy about the cold of night viewing.

The 114mm Celestron Firstscope Bill brought was not a bad instrument. If you run across people who are very price sensitive and not inclined to Dobsonians, it is a relatively inexpensive alternative. Not as much aperture, of course, and somewhat plain jane, but it gave fairly nice images and the mount worked nicely enough for what we were trying to do with it.