Seven HAL members enjoyed a very pleasant evening of observing at Alpha Ridge Park on the night of May 19/20.

Temperature was about 70 degrees at sunset and it was still 60 at midnight.  It was somewhat breezy,  but not too bad.  Seeing and transparency both seemed to be below average to poor.

Jason used a 4-inch Meade Maksutov-Cassegrain to observe some double stars while imaging M104 (Sombrero Galaxy) with a Seestar S50.  Steve started the evening with some binocular observing and also imaged M104 with his Seestar.  Bill was getting first light on his new Celestron 8-inch MCT, but he left before I was able to ask him how that went.  Alex observered several deep-sky objects with his 10″ Dob, including M13 (Great Hercules Globular Cluster),  M57 (Ring Nebula) and M44 (Beehive open cluster).  He imaged the Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565, Caldwell 38) with his Seestar S50.  Rich was present for the third consecutive night and got in some testing of his mount.  Ken imaged M82 (Cigar Galaxy) with his colossal Meade 14″ and also imaged M104 (a popular target) with a new Carbonstar 6-inch Newtonian.  I observered several pretty double stars, globular clusters M13, M92 and M5,  and M104 (everyone else was doing it, didn’t want to be left out) with my 8-inch Dob and added two hours to  my continuing mosaic of Markarian’s Chain + M87 with my Vaonis Vespera II.  Apologies to anyone for whom I may have gotten the details incorrect.

Everything went smoothly, except for some chaos early on arising from an accidental connection to the wrong Seestar.  So many Seestars in the area, it was almost bound to happen!

Everyone finished observing by midnight.  I locked the park gates at 12:30 AM.

Thanks to all who attended.  I’m very happy that the weather forecasting failures of the previous two nights did not continue.  Hope to see everyone out there again soon.

Ernie