by candace
i was in east bay visiting a friend yesterday, and after dinner i suggested we find somewhere to break out my telescope and peek at mars, since i hadn't had a chance to see it yet from the fog ghetto where i lived. she thought of several candidate places, but we ended up driving towards chabot to see what we would find, even if the park was closed.
about halfway up the hill, there was a nice, fairly wide turnout in the road, so i pulled over there. sure, there would be the lights from the very occasional passing vehicles, but there was also the light of the moon, so no big deal.
i hopped out of the car and plunked my astroscan onto the trunk. looking around, i noticed that the skies were MUCH sketchier than when we left hayward, but i figured i could at least look at mars, since that's all i really wanted out of the evening.
i put in an 18mm WA and trained the scope on the red jewel over the horizon. there it was--a tiny orange disk. i put in my 2x barlow, and stared at it for a bit. of course, it was hazy, but not too wobbly. i may have seen some slight shading on the disk. i showed it to my friend, who was mildly impressed.
then, i showed her some constellations and asterisms in the gaps in the clouds. i tried looking for M57, but the moon washed everything out too badly for my little scope to grab ahold of it. M13 was no problem, though, and was pretty amazing to her as a strange fuzzy anomaly in the sky.
what *really* impressed her was the moon. while i was looking through the charts, i told her to take control of the astroscan and do whatever she liked, so of course she pointed it at the inviting moon. her reaction? "WOW!!! i've never seen it that cool before!!" she was using the 18mm, so i handed her the 4mm, but she said that she liked the 18mm better because she could see the whole thing. (i like the 4mm better, for the detail.)
so then, just as the moon was about to set and the skies were getting clear, we packed up and left. i had a long drive back to the beach, but when i got home, it was even clear here!! maybe this is a good sign for the week, eh?