In a message dated 8/27/00 5:58:29 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Jay Reynolds Freeman writes:
More details later, perhaps. However, the Peak appeared friendly and viable as an astronomy site, and quite a lot of people seemed to be using it.
Jay,
Nice to hear things are looking up (pun intended) for amateur astronomy at the Peak. The skies at Coe were excellent last night. The fog did not roll in to the Morgan Hill/San Jose area until very late, but the seeing and transparancy were excellent. I didn't count scopes, but the lot was pretty full, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were 30 or so scopes set-up. Perhaps someone else who was there made a more accurate count.
Jupiter and Saturn showed lots of detail in my 12.5" dob, and was wonderful in a 6" AP with bino-viewer. (I think most of us know to whom the scope belongs.) Someone else had the California nebula in a Pronto with H-beta filter. I logged approximately 30 objects from the Herschel 400 list. Funny, as I was going over my list, I discovered that most of the fall/winter objects I have left on the list are open clusters. I already logged the galaxies and clusters! Wonder why that is. :-) Mark Wagner found an incredible galaxy cluster in his 18" dob. With a 20 Nagler, the area was 'glowing' but it mostly looked like stars in a nebulous field. When we pumped up the power...well, I'll let Mark describe it, he's much better at it than I am.
All in all, a fine night at Coe.