by Rich Neuschaefer
The overflow parking lot at Coe was about half full with observers. It looked like it would be a wet night with the haze in the valleys. But, the dew never came. The seeing for about an hour after sunset was pretty good, at least in the area of Jupiter. Later splitting doubles the images were pretty jumpy at high power (400x) and not clean Airy discs.
It was fun seeing the comet naked eye, near Draco's head. I was very nice in 8x42 binoculars and in my AP 155 with a 27mm Panoptic.
I looked at a few of the brighter Messier galaxies and some the not so bright ones in Virgo.
While Jupiter was still up reasonably well. I spent time showing it to a group of visitors. The seeing was good enough to let me use about 210x. When I pointed the scope at Jupiter the GRS had just transited. Near the "trailing" limb was a barge in the NEB. Following the GRS the SEB was widely split with white ovals. The NEB had some thickening ahead of the barge.
| Site | Henry Coe State Park, about 30 miles south of San Jose, CA. |
|---|---|
| Scope | AP 155EDFS (155mm f/7) APO refractor |
| Eyepiece | Pentax 5.2mm SMC-XL (for Jupiter observations) |