After a considered look at the satellite weather photos and the clouds topping the ridges above Palo Alto, I decided to go to the Peak rather than the Peninsula coastline. It was a zoo -- I expected that, and only brought my 10x50 binocular. The partial eclipse was quite dark, to my eye and memory notably more so than the one last September.

Hale-Bopp provided a nice show -- I could see two or three arcs or shells on the sun side of the nucleus in everything from 14.5 inch Newtonians down to a Pronto, and at 88x in Bill's 12-inch LX200, could trace at least one arc continuously through 270 degrees of position angle, and intermittently through the remaining 90 degrees. (That's "continuous" and "intermittent" in position angle, not time -- it took averted vision to see the arcs away from sun side at all, and I could not hold them steady.)

To the naked eye -- at least, to mine -- the comet showed a 10 degree ion tail and a 5 degree dust tail; through the 10x50, the figures were 10 and 7-8 degrees, respectively, all notwithstanding glare from the moon and occasional thin broken cloud.

Mars was very nice through Rich's 130 mm f/8 AstroPhysics at 278x. The central meridian was about 340 degrees at 20:30 PM PST. Syrtis Major, Sabaeus Sinus, Meridiani Sinus, and Mare Acidalium were all visible.