It was another nearly-perfect night of observing at Alpha Ridge Park
Monday night.  There were no clouds visible at sunset, although there
was some high-altitude wildfire smoke that put some structure into the
sky.  The temperature was actually a little cool, dipping into the low
60s by 2:30am, with no dew and calm winds. Transparency was below
average due to the aforementioned smoke and seeing was a little better
than average for around here.  My Sky Quality meter recorded a zenith
sky brightness of 19.88 magnitudes/square arcsecond at midnight.

Seven HAL members enjoyed the warm summer night.  HAL’s intern, Maddie,
came out with her mother, Jackie, to work with Krystal and Jose on her
quest to learn about operating telescopes and ultimately to assist HAL
in our outreach efforts.  Jose assisted her with setting up a small
refractor for imaging M16, and Krystal introduced Maddie to the opening
and closing process for HALO.

Krystal spent a couple of hours imaging M12 (globular cluster in
Ophiuchus) with her Dwarf-2 EAA scope after finishing up with Maddie. 
Jose imaged M16 (Eagle Nebula) through a small refractor all night while
he worked to get his 6-inch CarbonStar Newtonian setup working again
after letting it sit for a while.  Gary Richardson imaged NGC 7331
(Deerlick Group) with his 6-inch Celestron Origins EAA scope.  The FOV
was wide enough to easily include Stephan’s Quintet in the image.
Finally, I spent the night imaging M16, the Eagle Nebula, with my 8-inch
F/8 RC in H-alpha and OIII with a small amount of RGB for the stars.

It was nice to see other HAL members at a Monday night star party, and I
hope to see you all again very soon.

I locked the park gate at 4:45am.

Wayne