Unfortunately, I had to pass on the weekend's South Bay events due to family and friendly commitments. I did get the Ranger out on Thursday and Friday nights to do a little observing from the site at Land's End in San Francisco.

Thursday was the clearer night, and Hale-Bopp showed about 4 degrees of tail to the naked eye. At 70x, 3 of the "hoods" were visible intermittently through seeing so bad that the coma of the comet was actually twinkling to the naked eye.

Friday night, the seeing was better but we were looking through a faint mist, so the tail appeared shorter naked eye. Three hoods were still visible, and viewing on consecutive nights made clear the changing appearance of this effect. On Thursday the first hood appeared to be attached to the coma, giving it a comma-like appearance. On Friday the first hood was clearly detached. I was able to trace the hoods out through about 150 degrees of arc about the coma with the better seeing on Friday.

Mars also revealed some details. At 140x the polar cap was clearly visible, and there were some dark surface markings. I have not compared my notes to a Mars map yet, but one dark area appeared so large in my 70mm scope that it must have been Syrtis Major. (Friday Night at around 8:30 PST this marking was in the north of the Martian equator, toward the western limb of the planet.)