by Matthew Marcus
Oh yeah, forgot one more in favor of Coe. When we were there last weekend we got full bar cell phone coverage. They must have put a tower somewhere nearby.
Funny you should mention that. I was just up there last night with Allen (the one who posted an OI). His non-astro friend didn't show up. He did get good cell reception, but it seemed to be better on the E side of the lot than the W side, which you'd think would have a better view of any tower.
While I'm here I might as well make a short OI. Allen (Alan?) and I were the only ones there. The wind blew nearly constantly but not at the hurricane strengths often observed there.
Fog lurked all around, at times filling the valley to the SE, which meant that it was somehow coming in against the wind we experienced, which was the usual westerly. Because it was bright, we did lots of eye candy. Seeing went from pretty good (clean split of epsilon Lyr half the time) to crappy, at random. It was quite humid, with paper feeling perceptibly moist. I practiced finding some of the bright M-objects without using setting circles for a while. I didn't get to do much lunar observing because I parked in the moon-shadow of the Tree. On the other hand, that shade helped with visibility and I didn't have to put on my moonscreen :-) Allen and I traded views in our respective scopes (his: an LX200; mine: a C8 and a Ranger). I think I got him hooked on wide fields.
Allen bailed at about 1:30, and I followed at 2 or so, when a wave of fog started to come up over the lot. It receeded, but I could see that the next one might not. Curiously, although it seemed that SJ, Morgan Hill and Gilroy were capped by fog, the sky didn't get that dark. It may be that there was fog along the direct line between me and those cities, but not directly above those cities, so their light still scattered off the air.
Since it was bright, I only logged one object, an obscure PK planetary in Aquila which could only be told from a star by blinking with an OIII filter.
A relaxing night of trading views and hanging out under the sky. Who ya gonna call? Stress busters!
Posted on sf-bay-tac Aug 22, 2004 15:07:45 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 08, 2005 21:00:02 PT