I arrived at Del Valle at 9:30pm last night. Bruce Jensen already had his Starmaster 18" dob set up and was busy observing, as were Adam with his Intes 6" and Dave DaSilva with his 75mm Pentax apo. I set up my 13" Dob as well.

There was a moderate haze surrounding us but most prominent to the southwest. This haze reduced the naked eye limiting mag to approximately 5.5 (this is a swag, I'm not yet competent at this). Nonetheless, I decided to wade into the galaxies of Leo and Coma. The seeing was excellent although the transparency was not; still, I was easily able to find all the objects of my desire. Some were tiny dim specks, others were large diffuse dim patches, but many sported a fair amount of shape or detail.

I broke several times from this search for something different, such as when Bruce showed me the Antennae Galaxies or M3. Bruce Prickett arrived later, and later still (around midnight?) the transparency improved so that the naked eye limiting mag was approximatley 5.8 or so. Dave and Adam had left by then, but the two Bruces (no personality disorder implied) and I continued with the sensational globulars that were now available -- m4, m5, etc -- as well as some dimmer ones. Finally, Bruce Prickett took off, while Bruce Jensen and I wound up the evening with a quick look at M51 and M101.

I helped Bruce disassemble his Dob, and then we just leaned against his car and enjoyed the celestial dome for a while, catching the occasional shooter (Lyrids?) and basking in the glow of the Summer Triangle and the summer Milky Way. I finally said to Bruce, "okay, one more sensational shooter, and we're outta here!" We weren't disappointed. About five minutes later, one streaked brightly across the sky, leaving a glowing trail. We didn't need any further prodding.