Last night I heard about a school event at Evergreen Valley Community College. I decided what the heck, I haven't done one of these in ages and the night seemed warm so off I went.
To the best of memory the night was studied by at least 8-10 scopes ranging in size from 12" dob, a couple of C8's, a 4" Newtonian, and a 70mm (or close to it) refractor. I helped the guy out alligning the 4" scope as it was hopelessly out of wack. He indicated he took off the wrong end of the scope when trying to use it the first time.
The 4" scope did rather well with Alberio and the Ring Nebula (M57) and I was happy that I could help him.
The search was on to find the comet after the sky turned dark and he lights in the parking lot were turned off. I might add the seeing was poor but not terrible.
Dave North got the prize as he found the comet first. Many scopes followed and I think most people found it, not terribly impressive but a tail was easy to make out at 25x. A dark sky and better seeing conditions would have helped.
Any way more seeing followed with all the usuall suspects being seen. M8 (Lagoon Nebula) earlier in the evening was not impressive but latter in the evening with a broadband filter made some people go ohhh and ahhh (always a highlight when observing). Funny after seeing the usuall suspects many times now in many different conditions I still don't grow tired of looking at them even in poor seeing. I am sure one day it may happen but not yet!
I did manage to see M51 however it was difficult to make out but 2 lumps of light were seen by one of the public. M81/82 were also not very impressive and pretty much in the light dome of San Jose. When doing a public program faint fuzzy things are not what get the reactions. But I wanted to show a galaxy and not just nebulas. star clusters, and globular clusters.
It was evident there was a distinct haze in the sky making for the poor seeing and when I got home even the moon was obscured by overcast.
Anyway only one casualty, I put my finger print on my broadband filter. Do you clean these things like normal eyepieces?