by Mark Wagner
On Sun, 2 Apr 1999, Dave North wrote:
Conditions were a tad hazy early on, but they cleared up later, though the skyglow from the cities was unhampered by fog, so the skies were unusually bright. Still, we were getting to decent mags with little difficulty, so transparency must have been tolerable.
Some of us at Coe were looking over at the Peak and commenting on the glow "behind" it from Salinas. Coe was also bright compared to other nights, but the sky was very good, especially compared to the star-bloat we had on Friday night.
We did have the usual car headlights on the road to the park, but it was easy to have sufficient warning and avoid direct white light, since you could "see them coming" before they were near the lot. No problems with campers, of course. The horizons were outstanding, which I find a big benefit at Coe compared to the Peak. We also had probably double the number of people in the lot that were at the Peak (for astronomy), and with better planning, there would be room for even more (although, it was so loud with voices and people walking around early on, one observer commented it was like doing astronomy in a bar ;-).
As for magnitudes, I was into the 15's with an 18" Dob at Coe. Not too bad.
I am looking forward to trying Lake San Antonio end of this month.
On the plus side, the southwest lot looks more or less back in shape, and casual headlighting seems to be slowing down (and clearly will slow down quite a bit more with time).
Unless there is some pretty solid fog, I found last year that from the SW lot the skyglow from Salinas was unbearablve SW of the Peak. The view of skyglow over the Peak from Coe Saturday night was unbelievable. I bet Coe and FP are about equal in limiting mag at this point.