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necessitating the use of dust covers and firm tie-down ropes for scopes left assembled on the field. Figure /xx/ shows the North Observing Field, revealing the number and variety of astronomical instruments at hand.

At Latitude 30.6 degrees N and 1580m altitude, with an average of 17 percent Relative Humidity, every clear night becomes an observer's dream. At sunset, an impressive alignment of planets came quickly into view, with Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter all clustered above the setting sun. Mercury showed a particularly crisp crescent phase. After Astronomical Twilight, the Praesepe Cluster (Messier 44) sparkled near the Zenith, revealing stars of visual magnitude 6.0 and fainter to the unaided eye.

Around midnight, the Milky Way rose fully clear of the surrounding mountain peaks. Beginning at silvery Cassiopeia and scanning southward, the eye alone could easily detect every major star cloud, nebulosity, and rift along a nearly 200-degree stretch of the Galactic Equator. The Great Rift in Cygnus and other dark features imprinted themselves on the night-adapted vision like fiords in the coastal map of an alien, yet familiar country. The cold fires of the Scutum and Sagittarius Star Clouds glowed brilliantly, with the magnificent Globular Cluster Omega Centauri hanging a full two hand widths above the southern horizon like a tailless comet.

Speaking of comets, C/2002 C1 (Ikeya-Zhang) was still a naked-eye object all week as it drifted through the Head of Draco, displaying a short, bright fan estimated by observers at a total visual magnitude of 5.2. Messier 8 the Lagoon, M17 the Swan, M20 the Trifid, and dozens of other nebulae displayed their treasure in extremely high contrast, even in small telescopes. The numerous open and globular star clusters in Ophiuchus, Centaurus, Scorpio, and Sagittarius showed like diamonds on black velvet in the smallest optics. Galaxies swarmed in the eyepieces of large instruments.

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