by Marek Cichanski
Figuring that it would be cloudy, I went to Foothills Park to go for a hike and start breaking in some new boots. After my short hike, I was sitting on a bench at Windy Hill, surveying the tony terrain laid out before me, fantasizing that I was lord and master of all that I surveyed, when James Turley drove up. James and I hung around, he took some scenic photos, and we speculated as to whether or not the sky would clear. A whole lot of blue was accumulating in the north.
Wouldn't you know it, the sky cleared. A cold front moved through, the cirrus blew on past, and we had a beautiful clear sky. A few other folks showed up with scopes, and even a good number of public. Life was good, if windy and chilly. We had my ED80 on an alt-az mount, and there was a nice portable 6" dob, as well as a couple of 8" Meade SCTs, I think. Enough public to need the scopes, too. The public didn't stick around terribly long, which was understandable, but they seemed appreciative.
I don't think that anything terribly exotic was hunted down, although I think that Heidi, Isaac, and Mike may have gone asteroid hunting. William Phelps was running a planetarium program on his laptop, and I seem to recall that he was looking up the positions of some asteroids. I left around 10 or 10:30, and James and I went for beers and grub at B.J.'s in Cupertino. Life was good.
Before sunset, I remarked that I think there's such a thing as competetive amateur astronomy. To me, a "win" is when I go out in the face of bad conditions that keep everyone else at home, and manage to get clear skies in the end. Of course, I wasn't the only one out last night, so I wasn't the only "winner" - I guess it's not a zero-sum game. Maybe we're really competing against the weather gods.
Best thing was, we could see that Montebello was probably getting pasted by marine-layer cloud. Just the kind of night where we go to MB and get skunked, and curse when we drive down the hill and see how clear it is at Foothills Park. Well, this time, thanks to William and PAS, we were AT Foothills Park. Victory was sweet. Many thanks for the star party gate mojo.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Sep 19, 2004 10:00:56 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Jan 11, 2005 21:04:35 PT