Ten HAL members showed up for a very pleasant evening of observing and imaging at Alpha Ridge Park on the night of August 30th.  The first-quarter moon was out until a little after 11:00.  The temperature started out in the low 70s and dipped to the high 50s by 1:00 AM.  Seeing and transparency seemed to be above average.

David and Dave were both imaging the North America Nebula in Cygnus with Seestar S50s in equatorial mode.  Todd imaged the Western Veil Nebula with his Redcat 91mm refractor, while Mike D. imaged a 9-tile mosaic of the entire Cygnus Loop with his 122 mm refractor.

Mike P. imaged the Baby Nebula with his 8″ reflector.  I’m not familiar with this object, and a Google search didn’t help.  There is something called the Baby Eagle nebula, but that’s in Taurus and wasn’t visible.  I might have misheard his target.  He later imaged the more well-known Iris Nebula in Cepheus. Shrikant imaged the full-grown Eagle Nebula in Serpens with his 72mm Astro Tech refractor.  Richard imaged some small nebulae near M8, the Lagoon Nebula, with his 130mm refractor.

Lee and Marian got in some visual observations with their Celestron Nexstar 6 SE, but the scope lost its alignment at some point.  Rich was also having some issues with getting a good alignment with his Stellarvue 70 mm refractor.

I observed 7 double stars in Hercules and one in Corona Borealis with my 8″ Celestron Starsense Explorer Dob while waiting for the moon to set.  I then observed globular clusters M13 and M92 in Hercules and planetary nebulae NGC 6572 in Ophiuchus and M27 in Vulpecula.  I was pleased to share the view of M13 with Marian and double star Delta Herculis with Rich when they stopped by at different points in the night.  I added two hours of data to an ongoing mosaic of the Heart and Fish Head nebulae in Cassiopeia with my Vespera II.

I started packing up around midnight and everyone else left over the next half hour.  I locked up HALO and the park gate and left at 1:00.

Ernie Morse