I had hoped to go to Del Valle last night, but nobody else in the east bay responded, and it seemed my inertia was too great to go up there. And a haze seemed to be moving in. So instead, I observed from my driveway, and had a pleasing evening.

First, I owe thanks to the several people who at various times over the past two years have told me about using a laser pointer to turn off a street light. My laser pointer arrived from Damark last week, and it was easy to slip an o- ring around the barrel to continuously depress the on/off button, fix it to a photo tripod with a couple of rubber bands, and aim it out my bathroom window at the sensor on the streetlight in front of my house. Voila'! Instant semi- darkness. I wouldn't call the skies dark, but at least there wasn't an intense sodium glare in my eyepiece or down the tube.

I rolled out (literally - it's on casters) my Cave 8" and immediately took a look at Saturn. The seeing was not good, and haze was covering much of the sky, so I didn't spend much time there. I went to the Trap, but the seeing still wasn't good enough to see the fifth and sixth members. Still, M42 was its usual spectacle. Next, I went to the lovely Messier clusters in Taurus and Auriga. They were very nice at both low and high powers.

I noticed by then that the seeing seemed to be improving, although it was wavering in and out. I decided to try some double stars. I began with Castor, which was an easy split. I believe there's about 3 seconds of separation. I then used an old Norton's to locate several doubles in Orion, including 33 Ori, a 2" double that was cleanly split. I also "split" sigma Ori, which wasn't difficult but provided a lovely field of several close stars.

I decided to try something really difficult, so I went to lambda Cass. My Norton's lists it as 0.6" separation. The seeing was coming and going, with numerous blobs coming off the star like an Amoeba's pseudopods. There were moments when I was certain I could see the companion, but then it would disappear and a new blob would appear at a different p.a.

I wrapped up the evening by going back to M42 and the Trap. Now, both e and f could be seen at the moments of better seeing at 159x, and the nebula was beautiful at both that magnification and also at 65x in my newly-acquired 22mm Panoptic. I stayed with M42 for a long while before packing it in.

Fremont Peak it ain't, but even a small number of ancient photons are ambrosia to the starving observer. I had a good time.