Last Night at BC

by Jane E. Smith

Gregg Blandin, Bruce Burke and I gathered at BC last night along with some other locals whom I didn't know.... Randy Jeffreys(?), Tom, ????. Maybe Gregg can help with the names as he seemed to know some of them from the old days.

It was a balmy 58 degrees, with little or no wind. The skies were OK... not great, not even close to great, but better than I've seen in weeks. The early evening was relatively clear with 8/10 seeing. Views of Jupiter were superb. Then at 11pm, the clouds rolled in making us scramble for patches of clear sky. The bulk of the night was spent looking at bright eye-candy, or anything we would find, through the cloud patches. Then at 1:30am, the clouds rolled out. Unfortunately, I had started to pack it in about 1pm. Bruce and Greg were rewarded for their patience with 30-40 minutes of great sky just before the moon peeked over the trees.

Thanks to Bruce I was able to bag one Hickson early in the evening. He casually mentioned he had 3 of the 5 components of Hickson 68 in his scope. That got me moving. It made my night.