by Bob Czerwinski
The seeing at MB was quite good last night, with fairly decent skies to the south and southeast. Brighter in those directions than normal, I'd say, with a bit of early cloud-dodging required, but not too bad. Milky Way easily visible from the zenith to the southern horizon. Certainly not a night for serious deep-sky stuff, but a great one for southern globs, open clusters and such, which is what most observers seemed to be chasing. Some imaging going on as well. With mild temperatures, we were certainly above most of the Silicon Valley's gunk, but without any fog around down below us to darken the sky. Comet Hoenig easy to spot early on, but virtually impossible by 11:00pm when it was about 25-deg or so above the NW horizon. Uranus and Neptune *really* looked nice in my 14.5-inch 'scope, but I couldn't make out Pluto, even though I knew exactly where it was supposed to be (based upon its identified location in TheSky). This, quite frankly, really surprised me.
I'm starting to lean toward Fremont Peak for tonight, having observed there both Sunday and Monday nights, but might go back to MB instead. (Yes, I'm still between jobs right now.) I'll make a decision on this later this afternoon.