by Bob Czerwinski
Yes, it was indeed a *very* nice night at Coe, with the seeing extremely steady throughout the night. As has already been pointed out, the lack of fog kept it from being the darkest of nights, but the seeing - as predicted by Bruce Jensen - was wonderful. It was great to see so many people out observing, and the banter was, well, what you'd expect from a good-natured TAC'ish crowd. ;^) It was clear that everybody around was happy to see everybody else. I think the only issues of the night revolved around the parking-lot constraints. I know the popularity of Henry Coe as a close-in dark-sky site has waxed and waned over the years, but once again it's clearly the site of choice for many Bay Area observers, newbies and veterans alike. Oh, and I guess there was one other small issue to contend with; Mark Wagner noted the lack of Fosters being distributed in the parking lot. <grin>
Congrats to both Marsha R. and Mark W. for completing their H400-II and H400-I/II surveys, respectively, at Coe last night. Major accomplishments by both.
Ron Sherrill had his spankin' new 16-inch Starmaster out last night as well, and the views through this new 'scope were just outstanding. Congrats on obtaining such a fine instrument, Ron, and thanks for sharing the views. As Randy Muller is always pleased to point out, "You'll *love* your Zambuto mirror!"
I found myself all over the sky last night, chasing after a number of my survey-list items with my 14.5" Starmaster. I was originally a bit frustrated in the early evening when hunting down a few selected faint-fuzzies. The seeing was so good that I thought the sky early on was darker than it really was, so a few of the lower surface-brightness objects on my list eluded me ... but I'll nail 'em down later in the summer. Don't know if anybody did a limiting-magnitude star count last night, but if you did, please post your results.
At one point in time, with excellent-seeing showing just what it can do, Mark Wagner had an unbelievable number of galaxies in his 18" Obsession, centered on an area near NGC 4889 in Coma. These galaxies, mostly of the PGC variety, would drift in and out, with the dimmest probably close to 15th mag. Matthew Marcus and I shared the view; really something else to see.
A very fun night!