(Dark parking lot, but not the best sky)

Because of the clouds, most of us didn’t bring any equipment, but we enjoyed a tour through the observatory and a history lesson about HAL’s equipment by David.
We also talked about astrophotography gear, some plans for future star parties, and the best topic of the night was discussing how ugly the Tesla cyber truck is after one drove by.

I want to thank all the members who showed up tonight and encourage other new members to join our star parties. Even when there are no observations or imaging, there are definitely great conversations.

Jose Urias

(Clear but not the best seeing)

Hello, Everyone!

March 18’s Member’s Impromptu Starparty was a success with six members attending beneath a cloud-free sky.

Unfortunately, the predicted “Above Average” transparency and “Average” seeing opted not to attend the event. The general consensus has transparency as “Below Average” and seeing as “Poor.”

Temperature ranged from the upper fifties to mid-forties with no due present.

Two members concentrated on visual observing including open clusters in Puppis and Galaxies in Ursa Major.  New equipment seems to be a theme for the evening with one member working our kinks in a new auto-focusing system while another worked on an entirely new rig.

It seemed one member left each hour ending with me locking the front gate at 1:48am.

The only issue we noticed was the lack of lighting on the parking lot.  Once the park lights were re-illuminated, only five brightened. The majority remaining dark.

Thanks to everyone who attended.

Respectfully Submitted,

Ken Everhart,

(Lunar Eclipse)

Last night we had a total of 5 HAL members including myself.
I got at Alpha ridge park at 8:30 pm to start getting ready, and the rest of the attendees arrived at 11 pm.

We enjoyed a beautiful night with some light clouds every now and then but nothing that affected our imaging or viewing of the moon.

The temperatures dropped to the 38 F while we were there, but it was not windy so it didn’t impact us significantly.

As for the event, all 5 of us imaged the moon and the eclipse, mostly closeups but Danielle was also shooting a panoramic composition.

I believe it was a first time for most of us imaging the moon with our rigs so we learned a lot about the obstacles and work arounds for our specific rigs on such a bright object.

Cheryl used her Seestar S30, Luis used his Vespera, I do not remember what was Shrikant’s rig, and the same for Danielle but I think they were using either telephoto lenses or small refractors combined with DSLRs. I also enjoyed viewing the eclipse with a new pair of Nikon 10×50 binoculars I grabbed at Dick’s Sporting Goods before heading there. They worked so well for me that I would actually recommend them as they are affordable and well made.

We decided to wrap it up by 3:45 am because it started to get cloudy once the totality started to pass, and I closed the gate by 4 am.

Thankfully we ran into no issues, but the park rangers also checked and made sure the park was empty before I arrived.

This was a good experience to me on how to handle impromptu events when there are special and highly advertised events like this one.

I am leaving you with two of my images I quick saved last night, but I will be working on the other ones this weekend and I’ll share the results with you when that is done.

I used my Apertura Carbonstar 150 with ZWO ASI533mc pro, a neutral density filter before the eclipse with 0.01 second exposure, and gain 10. For the eclipsed state I actually used my dual narrow band filter as it helped me keep the red hue of the moon, and I shot at 50 gain and 1 second exposure.

My telescope has 6” aperture with 590mm focal length so I had to use those settings to se anything other than an overexposed light bulb. I hope to get more detail after stacking or working on better frames.

I look forward to see everyone’s images.

Jose Urias

We had a successful impromptu star party Sunday night, March 2, in the
cold but mostly clear weather. There were some high clouds around at
sunset, but they had moved out by about 7:45pm and it stayed clear until
it wasn’t. Temperatures were below freezing all night, starting at
31degF as I started observing and dropping to about 20degF by the time I
finished. Transparency was about average but the seeing was below average.

Four HAL members came to enjoy the evening, although three didn’t stay
very long. Relatively new members Lee and Maryanne stopped by briefly
to check out the location as they had never been to one of our star
parties before. Although they own an 11-inch Celestron SCT, they didn’t
bring it this time. They stayed for a while and chatted about astronomy
and our remarkably similar work experiences, and left before it got
truly dark. Gary brought his Celestron Origin 6-inch EAA scope and
started imaging NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis. Unfortunately, he had
trouble maintaining a WiFi connection with the scope, so he left by
8:45pm, leaving me alone. I continued imaging NGC 3718, a spiral galaxy
in Ursa Major, with my 8-inch RC scope.

I finished imaging at about 1:00am because a large bank of clouds moved
in. I locked the gate at 2:35am, after collecting flats and giving the
clouds a chance to clear up.

Thanks to everyone who came out. It was nice seeing you, and I hope we
can do it again soon.

Wayne

(The One with Mercury)

Six HAL members (including me) and around a dozen members of the public enjoyed clear skies and nice weather at the impromptu star party at Alpha Ridge Park last night.  I didn’t arrive until 6:15 and was suprised to find many people there with small telescopes and cameras set up to watch the “parade of planets.”  After consulting with a couple of the HAL members present and Wayne (via email), I decided to treat it like a public star party and turned on the lighting accordingly (back row on + red bollards).  I had the Dob set up, but put it back in the car in favor of interacting with the public and keeping an eye on things.  I talked to a few people about HAL and told them about the upcoming public star party, and pointed out Venus, Jupiter and Mars to a couple who showed up for a few minutes of naked-eye planet viewing.

 

By around 9:00, the public had cleared out except for one couple.  They had been observing with a small telescope for a while, but had just been sitting in the car for around a half hour at that point.  HAL member Jeff was packing up to leave, so he accompanied me as I politely asked them if they could please call it a night so that Jeff could close the gate when he left.  They agreed to do so, and I turned off the remainder of the park lights after they left.

 

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get a very detailed idea of what HAL members were doing.  Jeff was imaging Thor’s Helmet with a Unistellar eVscope 2, but wasn’t pleased with the result.  He also had an SCT for visual observing.  Mike was imaging the Wizard Nebula, among other targets, and reported that he had a pleasant night.  Steve was using a SeeStar and a Dob, but had some issues with leveling the SeeStar.  James was imaging the Horsehead Nebula, but I didn’t get the details on his equipment.  Finally, I met another HAL member just as he was leaving, and I unfortunately didn’t write down his name to get the correct spelling.  Phonetically, his name was Chou.  Sorry about that, I’ll remember to write all names down in the future.  If you are that person, please feel free to respond and your name can be corrected when this report goes up on the HAL website.

 

I decided not to set up the Vespera, but did some visual observing with the Dob after 9:00.  I observed 5 open clusters in Monoceros and Puppis (NGC 2301, 2343, 2353, 2506, 2539) and planetary nebula NGC 2440 in Puppis.  These are all Herschel 400 objects.

 

James was the last HAL member to leave, just after 11:00.  I turned the park lights on, locked everything up, made a final sweep of the park to make sure no members of the public were still present, and locked the gate at 11:15.

 

Ernie

James and Mae joined me for an impromptu star party last night at Alpha Ridge.  Skies were clear all night.  Winds were gusty for a while, but settled down to mostly calm by 9:00.  Temperature was down to 25 degrees by 11:00 with 40% relative humidity.

James and Mae imaged the Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) in Auriga with a William Optics refractor.  I made a (mental) note that the telescope was a Z71, but I looked back and saw that James posted first-light images for a Z61 with a Canon 250D/SL3 camera in December, so my note may be erroneus.

I added 800+ sub exposures to my imaging of the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) and did some visual observing with my 8″ Celestron Starsense Explorer Dob.  Seeing conditions seemed better than what we’ve been experiencing this winter, as stars appeared steady and I was able to get a clean split of the double star Eta Orionis (magnitudes 4 and 4.9, separated by 2 arc-seconds).  I revisited some of the open clusters that I observed two weeks ago under bright moonlight and added a few more, including M50 and M35.  I attempted some very faint fuzzies, including the rare winter globular M79 in Lepus, the reflection nebula M78 in Orion and the Crab Nebula (M1) in Taurus and was able to see at least a hint of something for all of them.

Since I mentioned a rare object in Lepus the rabbit, I’ll share this joke that my ex-girlfriend liked to tell some 35 years ago:  “How do you catch a rare rabbit?   How? Unique up on it!”  Ah, well,. maybe you had to be there.

The night went without incident.  James and Mae left at 11:15 and I locked up HALO and the park at 11:35.

Hoping to host impromptus on some warmer nights soon, now that this cold snap finally seems to be ending (knock on wood)!

Ernie

(The One with the Solo Keyholder)

I was the only attendee for the impromptu star party that I hosted last night. Skies were clear the entire time that I was there. The metadata of the exposures from my imaging shows 47 degrees and 45% humidity at 7:00 PM, falling to 41 degrees by 9:00 PM, but I think these values are ~5 degrees warmer than the real air temperature. The bright, waxing gibbous moon was was an uninvited guest, hanging out near the zenith and generally degrading the conditions for everyone (i.e, me).

Nontheless, I used my 8″ Dob to observe the double and multiple stars Gamma Leporis, Sigma Orionis (a breathtaking quadruple star system with the triple star Struve 761 in the same field), Zeta Orionis (Alnitak) and 145 Canis Majoris (aka h 3945), which some folk presume to call “the winter Albireo.” I also observed open clusters M41, M46, M47 and NGC 23622 (Caldwell 64, the Tau Canis Majoris cluster). The last one was my favorite, due to the namesake 4th-magnitude star blazing alone in the center, surrounded by a ring of much fainter stars.

I imaged the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros with my Vaonis Vespera II smart scope, using a dual-band filter and the new 3D-printed dew shield that I bought on Etsy. I obtained 75 minutes of data (450 ten-second sub exposures) of a 2.8- x 2.1-degree mosaic and was happy with the results. I’m attaching the JPG processed by the telesccope, but I’m going to work on processing the TIF file myself to see if I can do better than the telescope software. I would like to someday get to a place where I consider my processed images to be worthy of being displayed at the HAL monthly meetings! Not there yet.

I had to politely ask a couple of people to leave the park at dusk so I could lock the gate. One was a driving instructor giving lessons to student around the roads and parking lots. These lessons have been conducted before all three star parties that I’ve hosted, but I don’t recall seeing them previously. The other was a woman who showed up right at dusk and requested a 5-minute extension to walk her dog (which I granted). There were no other issues, and I locked up HALO and the park and left at about 9:10 PM.

I had a very nice time, but I’m hoping to attract some guests (besides the moon, which will not be invited back) to my next star party!

Ernie Morse