by Albert Highe
I almost didn't go. Despite the weatherman's forecast of a partially sunny Friday afternoon, the satellite image did not look promising. However, I left Redwood City just before 1PM. Traffic wasn't too bad. It took two hours to get there vs. 1 1/2 hours to get back. Six of us arrived before Sunset, and one after. It looked crappy. There were a few breaks in the heavy cloud cover revealing high thin clouds behind. Nevertheless, we all set up and had some fun reading the manufacturer's names on the windmills lining the distant hills.
At 5PM the heavier clouds began to break up a bit and by 6PM we were beginning to catch brief glimpses of a couple brighter stars. Venus appeared in a nice hole and we all took a quick look at it, thinking it might be the only non-terrestrial object we would be able to view.
Between 6 and 6:30PM, Jupiter was just detectable by eye, and I found it in my 80mm finder. Surprisingly, the view through my 12.5" was quite good, although dimmed by the clouds. Seeing supported 250X and continued to improve. By 6:30PM most of the sky was clear of clouds and very dark. Seeing easily allowed 300 - 400X throughout the night, even when clouds obscured the view. It was a good opportunity for me to compare some high power eyepieces: 6mm UO ortho, 6mm and 8mm Radians, and 4mm and 6mm Vixen Lanthanums.
Waves of the high thin soup moved in periodically, making the hunt for faint fuzzies difficult. I used these times to return to Jupiter and Saturn. We caught a nice transit of Io and its shadow. I estimate that we had a period of about two hours when the sky remained dark and clear. At other times, the duration of clear skies was shorter.
The temperature fell to 48F and stayed approximately there. The relative humidity was in the low 80's. It took a while, but some dew eventually did form on charts and tables. I had to dry my exposed secondary mirror only twice before I left at 12:30AM. Not too bad.
In addition to a lot of quality time viewing Jupiter and Saturn, I observed about 30 faint fuzzies in Cetus, Eridanus, and Orion.