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Last night I went down to the Peak. I read Jane's post saying she would be there with John Dobson and Barry Peckham. I had not had a look at a Litebox and had never met Mr. Dobson either.
The drive down was troublefree, no unusual traffic, but LOTS of crud in the air. The fires were doing a horrible number on the sky. From my home, in Palo Alto, I could smell the smoke. Things were better as I got further south so I had hopes of a nice night at the peak. I got there just after sunset, parked in the main lot near the iron ranger and walked over the observatory.
Barry was setting up Jane's 18" Litebox so I got a good idea of how this went together. The 12.5" (?) was already setup nearby. Jane asked Barry to help her collimate something and left me to man the 18. The combination of first quarter moon and bright (smoky?) sky left little but the moon to see, at least for a while. After moonset we looked at M103, Jupiter, Saturn, M34, M31. I tried showing NGC 891. The combination of bright skies and inexperience made this a very disappointing view to share.
After Barry returned I looked around to see who and what else was there. One REALLY unusual instrument. A pair of matched 13" newts set up as a binocular dob. The three dimensional illusion was amazing. The Dumbbell (M27) seemed to float above the starfield. I don't understand why it looked that way but the effect was very strong. The three big open clusters in Auriga really are lovely in binoculars, especially 13" ones!
There were quite a few students asking questions like "What was visible?", "How far away things were?", "How powerful is the telescope?". The standard stuff. The form their teacher gave them to fill out included focal length of the telescope and magnification. This really seemed to annoy John Dobson. What useless information and a waste of time. Don't worry about the details of the scope, enjoy the view.
The observing highlight of the night was tracing out the Veil with the 30". Despite the low elevation and the bright sky, it was easy to see with an OIII filter. Several people took turns marveling at the detail and size while lugging the big scope around the delicate wisps and knots.
I didn't get over to the SW lot so I don't know what it like. The main lot was lit up by a HUGE campfire in the nearby campground. Couldn't see it from the observatory, but when I went back to my car about 1:30 it was blazing.
No fights, no drunken fools (at least near the observatory). A really pleasant night at the Peak.