HAL Public Star Party Report - Special Edition
Public Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 9/03/2022
(The One With Nearly as Many People as Stars!)
As the clouds gradually cleared throughout the day, we held our September
public star party last evening. By the time I arrived at around 7:00, there
were already a few dozen people in attendance. Over the course of the
event, we had over 300 people – including many new members -- come out in
the best-attended event in quite some time. Before sunset, more than a
dozen scopes were trained on the moon which gave us a great show last
night. Richard Ren used it as an initial target to get HALO up and running
and gave us some great views in the process.
Phil Whitebloom rolled out the 16” Meade first gazing at the moon, then
transitioning to
Saturn and
Jupiter. The lines to view Saturn exceeded 35
people continuously for quite some time, eliciting a chorus of “WOW!” from
its admirers.
Other members were set up to view the moon, Saturn, and Jupiter with a few
training their equipment on
Neptune later in the evening and sharing their
views with our new members and guests.
In HALO, Richard eked out the best of every collected photon to give us
amazing images of the moon, the
Trifid nebula,
Dumbbell nebula and the
Ring nebula.
While all that was going on, Hannah Broder answered an endless stream of
great questions from our guests both inside and outside HALO.
By 11:00, everyone was packing up and heading out as some light high clouds
rolled in. Richard and I closed up HALO and the park around 11:45 after
downloading his collected images. I believe we will see those images in the
coming days.
What a great evening and event! Thanks to all who helped make it such a
success.
Best Regards,
Gary Richardson
Richard Ren added:
Last night the amazing sky condition beat all the weather forecasts!
The patchy clouds mostly remained at the horizon till the end of the star party.
Please see attached
a couple of stacked photos of
deep sky objects (M13, M16, M20, M27, and M57) taken by HALO.
Many thanks for the help of all the members who came out last night!
Richard
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