I observed Tuesday night...
By Jay Reynolds Freeman

For all that no one went to Montebello on Tuesday 24 February, evidently with good reason, I did set up my 98 mm Brandon in my yard, and chased double stars for a while. The seeing was reasonable in the flats of Palo Alto, but approaching clouds cut off my viewing session before it had lasted very long. I looked at a couple of the stars that Sissy Haas mentioned in her article in the April, 1998 issue of _Sky_&_Telescope_. Even though I have made a modest sweep of the sky for doubles viewable with small aperture, Haas usually comes up with several that I have not looked at: She works to about a magnitude fainter than my survey.

Some people have expressed surprise that I find decent seeing on the flats downwind of the Peninsula ridges; I should probably mention that much of my at-home observing is done quite late -- last night's session was at approximately midnight -- so perhaps things have settled down.