October 18, 2009: Henry Coe

Rogelio Bernal Andreo

Coe tonight was a give'n'take kind of thing...

I arrived around 8pm and it was overcast, seriously absolutely overcast, despite Sunnyvale being in the clear when I left home at 7pm. So bad it looked I saw Jim Harper on his way down, giving up, as I was arriving. Paul Duncan and Erik ?? were up there, giving the sky a chance. I was also very windy.

We waited and at 9:15pm the sky cleared 100%. By 9:30pm it was pretty good, almost powderish... It's nice to see it come up like that all of a sudden. After one hour however, within 5 minutes, we lost the sky almost completely due to fog, to later reappear nicely 10 minutes later... To later lose it again after 20 minutes... To later reappear for another 1/2 hour or so... Erik left somewhere in one of those come'n'go moments. The wind died eventually. We had some more minutes of nice sky and I've got the best data of the night right after midnight. It seemed that it was either good or gone with transitions that lasted just a couple of minutes. Basically, after the clouds were gone at 9:15pm, the sky above us was pretty good I'd say, and it was just the fog moving in and out what was making us go AHHHH or OHHHH :-)

Around 12:45am we lost it again, and this time the fog really got us. Light domes? What light domes? You couldn't see a thing! We were lucky we could see the big tree!! Paul decided to call it a night, and I told myself to wait until 1:15am and if the sky didn't come back, just pack and go home. At 1:10 I said ah forget it, and started packing. I told myself "I'd better pack quickly because if it comes back before I leave I'm going to get really pissed".

But of course by 1:15 the sky was back, and of course I'd say better than ever. I finished packing anyway and stayed a bit longer simply because it felt nice to be there under the stars... I left around 1:45 leaving behind what one would describe as a very nice sky for Coe standards. Did it last? Well, I didn't care :-)

I left home with about 70 minutes worth of data. I've had better nights but at least didn't leave empty handed and it was nice to see Paul and Erik again. An observer would have had a more productive night probably.

I bet it's crisp and clear now up there :-)

Rogelio