by Akkana Peck
I often think the Sidewalk Astronomers have the right idea. That's essentially what you, Akkana, Taylor and Mr. Bill were...
Someone (Mark?) commented on that, and then we had to figure out what city we were in (the restaurant is near the border of Sunnyvale/Cupertino/Los Altos) and eventually concluded that we were the Sunnyvale Sidewalk Astronomers.
It was fun, though we did have to play traffic cop once or twice when people stopped in the middle of a lane, blocking other people, to ask what we were looking at.
Bill's Pronto handily won the "portable planetary scope" award, showing nice detail on Jupiter at 70-100x, while my 90mm f/5.6 Maklet (Pro-Optic) won the value award since it costs about 1/4 as much; I could make out two bands on Jupiter at 75x if I worked at it.
The appulse was pretty, in any instrument including the naked eye. The wonton soup was good, too. :-)
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jan 21, 1998 17:27:02 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Feb 15, 2005 20:23:06 PT