by Jane Houston Jones
70 degrees at 2:00 a.m., low for the night 66 degrees, hovering about 68 all night. Humidity in the low 40's. Basically your bad for fire danger but good for astronomy shirtsleeve observing night.
Limiting magnitude using Area 6 Alpha Andromeda, Gamma Andromeda, Alpha Pegasus chart was 17 stars formagnitude 6.5, and seeing was darn good. The sky seemed a little brighter than my count indicated.
There was alot of telescopes, maybe 30 or 40 in all last night, plus a group of 42 members of the UC Berkeley Astronomy club, who are known as Astronomers in Berkeley? :-) with maybe 6 telescopes, not counted in the above group of 30 to 40. Quite a large gathering! But it is a huge lot and anyone who wanted privacy could have used the half of the lot that was completely empty.
A bunch of us were bidding farewell to a couple of our SFAA astronomy club pals who are moving back to Scotland later this month, so there was a larger contingent than usual from the SFAA last night, mostly down in the lower area of Lone Rock Flat, maybe 20 people and 20 telescopes in all.
Since this huge flat is a trailhead used by hikers and equestrians as a staging point for daytime activities, there was one large horse trailer in the lot when the astornomers got there. The couple (who make saddles and teach others how to ride horses) with the horse trailer, had been out on a afternoon and dusk ride and were amazed to see all the telescopes un their return. They put their horses in the trailer and spent a good hour or more at my eyepiece, and found many objects with their binos. They had a great time. Their horse riding group is working with the Lake Sonoma Army Corps of Engineers to build a campsite right below Lone Rock Springs in a meadow, which can't be seen from the lot, but that may be used for all people who want to camp there instead of driving home. I can imaging leaving your car in the Lone Rock Flat, and just walking down to a tent for a little morning sleep or for a followup day in the wine country after observing. When they left, they drove slow and used just parking lights, which was more than many of the astronomers did.
There did seem like more than the usual amount of car traffic on Rockpile Road, but I forgot my Hickson object binder so I didn't try the faint stuff and coped with the lights and had a great time!