by Rob Hawley
Driving south I could see fog coming through the gap from Monterey. Worse yet high clouds followed me south from San Jose. By sunset only holes remained in the sky. The seeing was decent and we got some reasonable views of the planets.
One of the rangers was packing his truck. I called out and invited HIM to join us later that evening.
That invitation got converted into an invitation for the campers. Not wanting to offend the rangers at a very friendly site I did not correct him. For about the first hour after twilight almost no one came. Then a number of groups descended on the boat dock with lights blazing. This group was the evil twin of the folks the previous night at Houge. Most of the Houge folks were really interested in astronomy. Unfortunately there was nothing to show on Friday in the heavily light polluted skies. The Saturday group wanted to look at Jupiter. Everything else was boring. The capper was the group that drove into the lot at high speed about 9PM. The late teen guys (Kevin thought early twenties) were drunk and offensive. Fortunately their girlfriends had them under some control.
At least they did not ruin a great viewing night. Much of the stuff I was looking for was in the clouds. I ended up looking at the bright Messier objects. The seeing varied greatly through the evening. The humidity was high most of the evening, which killed the transparency. In the good moments I got some good views of the bright M galaxies along with M3 and 13.
About 10:30 we noticed fog forming over the lake. It seemed to not affect us other than everything was wet. Suddenly about 11:30 the air over the parking lot just condensed and we were in thick fog. After about 15 minutes folks started breaking down.
I arrived home about 12:30 to perfectly clear skies. It is likely I would have done better just observing from home.
Some nights I want to sit on the hilltop under clear skies checking off items on my observing list and other nights it's fun to just be outside with your friends. Coyote last night was definitely the latter.
We had enough visitors that I really was not able to get away from the scope very much. I had not secured the equipment as I would at Houge. Pity because I agree that walking around is part of the fun.
The earlier group was fairly pleasant, but they seemed pretty bored at most of what was available. Sounds like you had more interesting folks at your end. I was also impressed with the folks the previous night at Houge.
The drunk folks were actually a bit scary. I am glad their girlfriends were able to exert some control.
Yeah there were some headlights but that happens at Coyote.
I got in the habit of keeping my red glasses available whenever at Coyote. I agree that is the cost of doing business at Coyote. We should have probably briefed the ranger better so at least the traffic kept up near the street and away from the scopes. Several of the folks left with only parking lights, which was nice.
supernova 2004bd in NGC 3786
I also tried for it with no success.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 11, 2004 08:27:28 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.1 Jul 10, 2004 16:13:26 PT