Being a meteorologist, a time there was when I would thrill to an endless parade of clouds and rain for a couple of weeks in a row, watching the changing play of patterns of light and dark and gray and blue across the dome of the sky, with occasional rainbows and lighting to add welcome accent. In between would come stretches of sparkling winter and spring days, with half of my world a deep cerulean blue by day, and an even deeper void of velvet blackness at night spattered with the glimmer of a thousand remote suns. Then came El Nino and his smaller but equally tenacious sister, La Nina. Since then, the parade of earthly aqueous nebulae has extended from weeks to months, and the sparkling days seem to be a thing of the past. So, when the rare clear day teases with tenuous promise of productive starwork at night, it seems critical that I should jump on it.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
We drove on back to our lovely viewing site and set up. For a few hours, the sky did cooperate - mostly. At best, Paul estimated the limiting magnitude at 6.3, which was probably about right for the portions away from the Bay Area sky glow. The data for the following observations are taken from the Sky Atlas 2000 Companion and the Uranometria Field Guide . Between the cirrus wisps, the sky was quite good.