Despite a threatening marine layer, several observers climbed into the hills of the San Francisco Peninsula to attempt a close-in star party at the Montebello Open Space Area main parking lot, on Wednesday, 29 July, 1998. When I arrived at the site, about half way through twilight, a Celestron 8 and a six-inch Astro-Physics refractor were set up, gathering dew, and scraps of tenuous low cloud drifted low and slow across us from the south.

Yet the evening did not give the complete appearance of a bust. The wind was light and declining, and in those conditions, clouds sometimes settle. What's more, the seeing looked good -- even low Antares was not visibly twinkling Presently I set up Refractor Red, my 55 mm Vixen fluorite, and took a look at a few objects.

At 88x (5 mm Celestron orthoscopic), Antares gave tantalizing hints of a separation, though the first diffraction ring -- in which the companion would have been embedded -- was not quite steady. I am hampered in this observation, for I know where the companion is supposed to be. At the same magnification, epsilon Lyra was occasionally split into four stars, though not always, because of seeing jitter. More magnification would likely have helped, but I was too lazy to change eyepieces. I also took a look at Polaris, but could not spit it at 88x, likely because excess moisture caused excess glare near the primary. I have split Polaris with Refractor Red previously.

The C-8 had dewed out, but the few of us gathered to look at the Moon through the six-inch Astro-Physics. This older, f/8, pre-ED-glass, model was giving fine images. With a 6 mm Vixen Lanthanum eyepiece in use, I could detect no color on a vertical edge of the Moon's waxing crescent. I spent a while gazing at the terrain near Tranquillity Base; there was a lot of detail, and I suspect I could see a couple of the craters named for the Apollo 11 astronauts, but I had forgotten to bring a lunar atlas, so could not check. Refractor Red gave quite nice views of the Moon itself, of course not with as much detail as the larger instrument, but the subtle gradations of hue and intensity looked very similar.

By 10 PM, the sky was completely clear, but most of us had torn down equipment and were packing up, and the inertia was impossible to overcome. We all left.