Saturday, April 5, the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers held their monthly star party on Mt. Tamalpais. The turnout was excellent, as several members I had not seen in months turned out to get a good look at Hale-Bopp. The 50 or so members present were joined by as many as 500 of the public, who made the trip to see the comet and to attend the first installment of the 1997 Mt Tamalpais Astronomy Lecture series at the Mountain Theater. The night's topic was the Martian meteorite found in Anarctica; I did not attend but heard some good reviews of the presentation.

Sky conditions were far from perfect, as high clouds around sunset evened out to a persistent haze that reduced transparency and trapped more of the local skyglow than usual. Limiting mag never got much better than about 5 over most of the sky. Even so, I got my best evening view of the comet yet, as it was happily placed in perhaps the clearest part of the dome. In a pair of borrowed 7x50s I was able to directly see structure in the ion tail, and traced the gently curving dust tail out to about 9 degrees (judged as 1.5 binocular fields). In my 8" dob the nucleus was showing 4 hoods to averted vision, and after twilight ended I was able to trace them around through almost 180 degrees.

The crowd that innundated the telescope lot after the lecture ended was good-spirited and inquisitive. The quality of questions showed that these were people who had already done a little reading and had a general idea of what they were looking at. Many were interested in sights other than Hale-Bopp, and didn't mind standing in a short line to get a view of Gamma And, M42, M35 (and NGC2158), and M37 through my 8". While the crowd thinned out after everyone had a look at the comet, a good number remained until the 10PM close of the public portion of the program.

The seeing began to settle in at about the time most of the public were heading out, and we got our first good looks at Mars. By consensus the best view was through a 7" Meade ED refractor; at 330x the polar cap was obvious (I actually thought I could see brightening at the opposite pole as well), along with a wide, irregular, band just below the cap that was the most easily seen dark feature on the planet. Another dark band near the opposite pole was also fairly easy; moments of good seeing revealed an irregular dark spot near the equator, and noticeable haze at the limb. As the evening wore on, Syrtis Major became more and more apparent as it rotated into view. This I was able to see in a few short looks through the scope, as there was a continual line. An observer taking the time to watch for moments of excellent seeing could probably see much more detail. I did have a few of those prolonged steady moments while viewing with my 8" dob at 340x, and was able to see all the details noted above, but contrast was noticeably lower and hand-tracking made it harder to concentrate.

Also worthy of mention was the very nice view presented by a brand new Celestron 4" ED refractor. The owner was running it at 350x, which was a little uncomfortable for me as the tiny exit pupil revealed many little "floaters" polluting my eyeball, but otherwise the image held up well at that magnification and most of the details visible in the larger scopes were still apparent. The small exit pupil did reduce glare to the point that a filter was not necessary, and the naturally-tinted view was quite handsome. The smaller aperture was also less affected by the seeing and the view held steady during a long stare through the eyepiece.

Mars became the undisputed star of the show after comet-set, but we also explored a little further out in space. I spent some time with my favorite open clusters along the winter Milky Way, including Ms 36, 37, and 38 in Auriga, and Ms 46 and 47 in Puppis. M104 (the Sombrero) showed up decently in a 12" dob and the 7" ED, despite the haze, but it wasn't a great night for galaxies. After 11 o'clock some summertime favorites began to rise, and we viewed M3 and M13 in a variety of scopes, among them a 16" f4.5 Orion Dob.

A little before 12 the fog rolled in with amazing speed. One minute I was enjoying a decent view of M65 & 66 in Leo, than I turned my head down to check the chart and see where to go next. Suddenly I felt a cold dampness on the back of my neck, and looked up to see the limiting mag reduced to about 2! A premature end to an imperfect, but satisfying evening of observing and sharing the sky with the public.