The USS Hornet aircraft carrier from WWII, now a floating museum docked at Point Alameda, was used to retrieve Apollo 11 and 12 astronauts after their respective splashdowns.

View of the Bay Bridge, San Francisco, Mt. Tamalpais (far distant right) and fog rolling in through the Golden Gate.

One of several 5" .38 calibre canons on the Hornet. If you're good, your guide will let you take it for a spin - literally!

Sunset over the Marin headlands as seen from the flight deck of the USS Hornet.

Amateur astronomers were invited aboard the Hornet for the Splashdown 2004 event (to celebrate the ship's involvement in the Apollo space program); here they are setting their gear up for viewing that evening.

Public view the sights around the Bay Area through amateur astronomers' telescopes on the flight deck. At sunset, the fog covered the entire sky, unfortunately hiding the more astronomical targets.

Normally, these telescopes would be pointing in a more "upwardly" direction, but since the sky was clouded over, we demo'd the power of our telescopes by showing people how close in we could bring in more terrestrial sights.

Notice how much harder this telescope is to look through when it's in the horizontal position. It's really meant to be pointing up, not across.