by Bruce Jensen
Hi, all - it sounds as though many observing places yielded mixed results on Saturday evening; as it turns out, San Antonio Valley was quite nice, very clear, benefited from low-level fog in the inner Bay Area, only light breezes, and little dew. Patrick Meehan and I went up there to see how the old standby location was doing, and it was lovely as ever (a long drive though). The main problem was "seeing," with any views over about 140x suffering pretty badly until later on in the evening, perhaps about midnight. Pat used his C-11, I the 18" Starmaster.
The horizons were darker than I recall from last autumn, probabaly due to the blessed fog layer. Seyfert's Sextet, Copeland's Septet, the Hercules Galaxy cluster and several less sociable galaxies all showed pretty well, considering the fuzziness of the sky; the dimmest magnitude I could see was mid-14's, and I think we would have gained a magnitude had the atmosphere been more stable. Unaided limiting magnitude was probably about 5.7 at best, again not due to lack of transparency but rather due to wobbly skies.
I'd like to suggest that a few folks who haven't been there, come on up and give it a try once - it is beautiful day and night.