by Jane Houston Jones
Saturday was our volunteer night at Fremont Peak Observatory. We drove down a day early and observed with the 30-incher Friday night, and hiked in Pinnacles National Monument Saturday afternoon.
We got up to Fremont Peak at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday night. When you are the resident volunteer the show must go on. At least the indoors talk or slide show must go on. So I did a talk and presentation on the Milky Way, and as I was finishing the talk I heard a happy sound. The roof was being rolled off!
The fog hovered below the observatory and then undulated at times obscuring the ranger house, road and sometimes parts of the sky. We took some magnificent photos of the fog combers rolling off the peak at sunset and before.
We still were able to show mediocre views of Milky Way objects, a couple galaxies and a blobby Neptune until 11:00 p.m. While Mojo was putting the telescope to bed, I gave a constellation show to a woman named Nova and a dozen of her friends with the help of my green laser. She wa a teacher and wanted to see some Novae.
The laser worked great in the fog! We probably had 50+ visitors even with the cruddy conditions. A huge boy scout jamboree thing at Doe Flat was going on and we had extra volunteers for the expected crowd, but the scounts never showed up. Oh well, more so-so views for the others! And they were appreciative! Three telescopes out front of the observatory, including those of our weekend pals Mike and Jim who we usually observe with at Mount Tam and Lake Sonoma. Ron Damann set up one of the observatory scopes outside too.
Then at about 11:00 p.m. we packed up the Challenger, rolled the roof back on and drove down to room 116 at the San Juan Inn for a date with Saturday Night Live, a bottle of Mercury Rising red wine, and some cookies, cheese and baguette. We couldn't let our observing snacks go to waste, could we?
PS: I walked over to SW at 10:00 p.m. and then walked back since it was completely vacant. Right then it was actually pretty clear!