by Marek Cichanski
Got up there a couple of hours before sunset in clear air, but the marine layer clouds started pushing in even before the sun went down, and it was quite windy. Things looked really bad for our heroes, because the cloud was up at our level. Then the cloud started pouring over the very summit of the Peak. Things looked grim-ish. Amazingly, though, the Peak was forming a perfect downstream 'hole' in the clouds, and the sky above us stayed clear. There was cloud and fog all around us, though. The public came up, went into the observatory, and the FPOA talk began. Venus and friends came out, played tag with the top of the clouds, and it was still clear above. I had little choice but to keep setting up. I was there to do the public night with my scope, and it would only be a matter of time before everyone came out of the lecture room.
Amazingly, we never got completely fogged out. It was dewy as heck, and the Kendrick heaters were hooked up and running, but there was always some sky overhead. I was able to show Jupiter to a lot of folks after the talk. Paul was able to show people the three planets by setting up some of the big FPOA binos and one of the parallelogram mounts on a tripod, out on the Pads. Neat! Ron and Pat were even able to crank open the roof and get the Challenger going, even though vapors and mists swirled all around us like something from a haunted house.
As twilight ended, it just got better. We could see that the cloud was 'waterfalling' down to a lower level as it went past the Peak, which gave us hopes that it would settle. Sure enough, it did. Wind died almost to nothing, fog densified and settled, and we had a great night! We had that classic view to the south from the Pads, where one looks over fog to the distant ridgelines beyond. Wonderful! The Milky Way was very bright and structured. Granted, it was only two hours of astro dark, but it was immensely worth it. I showed M13 to a number of folks, and gave a long-winded tour of the summer's eye candy to a nice couple who'd strolled over from the campground. Then I gave myself a nice long Messier eye candy session, in between enjoying the images that Richard Crisp was getting from his 7" AP imaging rig. Seeing was good, transparency was good, darkness was good. Life was very good.
Managed to hunt down comet Tempel 1, and it's dim. Put it this way - it was dim in my 18" scope on a good night at the Peak. It was still pretty dim even once Ron and Pat put the 30" on it. Deep Impact is gonna be a heck of an improvement. Hey, it's pretty cool of NASA to brighten that comet up for us, isn't it? Now if they could just do something about M 101...
Richard Crisp was imaging NGC6946, a really nice face-on spiral in a star-rich field. His images looked really neat, and Ron managed to hunt it down in the 30". It showed the beginnings of some spiral structure in the Challenger, which was cool.
I packed up once the moon rose, and there are way worse things in life than packing up at the Pads on a calm night, above an inversion, looking at a moonlit cloud sea, shooting the breeze with a fellow observer. Richard was still imaging when I headed out at about 1:15.
Last night at the Peak was a great lesson in the changeability of the marine layer. Sometimes, persistence and faith in the face of long odds really do pay off. I won't soon forget that feeling of joy as the fog densified and settled. Sometimes you get lucky.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jun 26, 2005 11:42:32 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Sep 25, 2005 18:25:34 PT