by Jay Reynolds Freeman
I took my 1987 model 6-inch Astro-Physics refractor to the public star party at Palo Alto, California's Foothill Park on August 5, 2000. A five-day Moon and light pollution from the cities on the shore of the Bay lit the sky, but even so, the view to the south and west was reasonable for limited deep-sky viewing.
There seemed to be more telescopes than members of the public. I only had one group of people come up to me and ask for a look. It was nice to be able to use this close-in site freely, but what a shame that local residents miss out on the opportunity to view through telescopes. Equipment on site included several other large refractors, up through an Astro-Physics 7-inch, plus a handful of Schmidt-Cassegrains, and proportionately fewer Newtonians than we usually see at Coe or at Fremont Peak.
Seeing was not the best. I stuck with 103x most of the time, trying 248x only on a few tight double stars. The former magnification is not enough to exploit the capabilities of the big Christen triplet. Even so, I was able to identify the tiny crater, "Armstrong", to the selenographic east of Tranquillity Base on the Moon, during moments when the air briefly steadied. Bright deep-sky objects were more satisfying; the six-inch shows most Messier globulars as at least partly resolved. I was able to get a nice split of both pairs of nu Sco, as well as of zeta Aqr, at 248x and such easier targets as eta Cas, zeta UMa, and epsilon and zeta Lyr, all at 103x. I tried Antares, but the seeing did not steady enough to show the companion.
I took a break for an hour or so before Moon set, hoping for noticeably darker sky thereafter, but alas, as the evening wore on the relative humidity rose, and the moisture in the air increased the effect of human-made light pollution. By 1:00 AM, the temperature was still in the high fifties, but my electronic relative humidity gage showed 94 percent. I was beginning to see traces of dew on my eyepiece eye lens and on the finder objective, and the bright sky did not seem worth a fight, so I packed up and went home.