Who got out to observe last night?

Jamie Dillon

Johnston went -
>The lower thick cloud deck often fools clear sky clock it seems when >mountains are involved.

Yeah. It's set for sea level. Good way to stay home in the summer when the marine layer is in.

And Pierce has gone -

>well, up at bonny doon we had a couple hours where about 1/2 the sky >was clear and dark. initially at twilight, there were bands of stuff >blowing from northwest to southeast, then once it got properly dark, >it was pretty good for said 2 hours. by about 11pm, another layer of >murk came in, and this layer was less banded and more spreckled, and >it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to get any better, so I >bailed. was quite a lot of dew too.

and I am going to shamelessly plagiarize here. It was just like that at the Peak. I had fun with the binocs, Orion 10x50's. We had stretches of decent starry dark in the East. Got to scan the summer Milky Way, did a tour of the fancy big globulars, and caught the Sombrero, M104, in binocs for the first time. I'd seen it in my 9x50 finder, so was confident. Used Bright Star Atlas as well, now that's a blast from the past. I've also relearned that M81 and 82 are cool in binocs.

Main thing, I got that hit from being under the stars, a better sky than in town. Had moved from Ranger Row after a while to the SW lot, ran into Ron Ober from Hollister with his C14. He's a real regular up there. At the SW lot, the Observatory, on Ranger Row there were scads of people looking at the night sky. This must have a positive effect.

Sure does on me. more more,
DDK