Several San Francisco Bay area observers had planned observing sessions at Pacheco State Park, between Gilroy and Los Banos, California, on the weekend of November 13-14, 1998. Friday the 13th was the night to go, but poor weather earlier in the day and heavy work schedules for at least one of us (me) resulted in the event being cancelled. But six or eight telescopists showed up there on Saturday the 14th, and had a rather frustrating experience:

To begin with, a front was crossing the northern part of California, and occasional patches of high cirrus cloud trailed over us. The gaps between clouds were bigger than sucker holes -- it was possible to do some serious observing -- but nonetheless, clouds were vexing at times. Second, the evening started windy. Third, seeing was at most so-so. Finally, it was pretty wet -- several of us had serious dew, and after the wind died down, the evening ended early, with the onset of fog.

Pacheco State Park is good because of dark sky -- it is a few minutes' less driving time from the Bay Area than is Fremont Peak, but has much less light pollution, and better horizons. Yet it is in a shallow local depression, near the top of a broad, flat pass, and that is a good place for fog to settle. On the 14th, early-evening wind kept things stirred up enough to deter fog, but later, when the wind dropped, the air mass stayed in position and was cooled from below as the ground underneath it radiated to the sky. Fog started to form at our site and on the slopes of the hills surrounding, then slid down and inundated us.

I was not too discouraged by the conditions, for I had made some modifications to Harvey, my white Celestron 14, that I was anxious to test (and have described in a separate report), and one of these -- the addition of a Kendrick anti-dew system -- was particularly helpful with the wet conditions. Furthermore, I had a backup observing plan involving relatively bright but relatively little-known objects that I could find quickly as clear spots passed overhead. I started with more prominent things, however -- Jupiter's satellites were in an uncommon configuration, with only Callisto visible. The planet looked rather lonely at 163x (Brandon 24 mm). Later on, I looked again with 98x (40 mm Vernonscope Erfle) and found two more moons had just cleared the disc. I looked at Saturn, too, and saw the Crepe ring, the Cassini division, and the broad dark band in the southern hemisphere. Seeing and telescope were too unsettled to show more detail.

Everybody was looking at Comet LINEAR (C/1998 U5 -- there are lots of "Comet LINEAR"s out there). I hadn't brought an ephemeris, and the comments of Dobson users ("left of Stock 23") weren't much help with an equatorially-mounted telescope. But I finally found it, not far from Stock 23, and had a nice view at 98x. The comet seemed to have a slight tail, and was moving rapidly, almost rapidly enough to see, and certainly sufficiently so to notice after a few minutes. (And incidentally, it won't be near Stock 23 by the time you read this.)

My backup plan had three parts: First, I reviewed some Messier objects -- always fun with a large aperture, but probably not novel enough to tell you about.

Second, I have a "cats and dogs" list of odds and ends that I haven't seen, tucked into my observing brief case, and I scanned it quickly for things to look at that might be detectable in erratic conditions. The first item on it was IC 1318, a huge complex of emission nebulosity near gamma Cyg. There were some gaping holes in the clouds at that position, and the Kendrick system was working well, so I took a look. Some of the charted patches are more than a degree across, and my 98x eyepiece has only about a 40 arc-minute field, but on sweeping back and forth I could clearly detect enhanced brightness of the background sky at some of the charted positions of the nebula south and west of gamma, compared to positions only a degree away. These observations were repeatable after intervals of several minutes, I double-checked that that part of the sky was still clear, and I was observing far enough from gamma to be clear of its own glare, so I logged IC 1318.

Another nearby item on the same list was the dark nebula Barnard 145. The rich starry background of central Cygnus made this one quite obvious at 98x.

The third part of my backup plan was rather vaguely defined -- I knew that many parts of the Milky Way contain large numbers of open clusters that are not in the NGC or IC, and I intended to chase some of them down. By coincidence, there are a handful not far south of gamma Cyg, so I spent a while exploring this region. Near NGC 6781, I found and resolved Biur 1 and 2, and -- a little farther away, Berk 86. These rather sparse loose aggregates of stars were identifiable to the eye at 98x in the C-14, but are not as impressive as most NGC open clusters. Also in this region were several clusters of fainter stars that I saw at most as granular; namely Do 3, Do 38, Do 40, Do 41, and Do 42. There were more nearby as well, but about that time I spotted the first wisps of fog gathering on the nearby hillsides, and started taking down my telescope.

The night had been short, but productive. The Kendrick system helped enormously. I also tried one non-telescopic accessory to cope with the cold and the wet. I had bought some catalytic heating pads -- rectangles of gauze about two by three inches, filled with chemicals that get hot when exposed to air, sold wrapped in plastic at hardware and sporting goods stores. I paid a dollar for packets of two. These are supposed to get toasty warm and stay that way for five to seven hours. They did. I experimented with tucking them into my gloves, hat, pockets and shoes, and in all these locations they provided useful amounts of heat. They can get uncomfortably hot -- I would not have put them into footgear that I could not quickly get off, for that reason. A small amount of heat goes a long way toward providing observer comfort, so these units are likely to be something I will continue to use.