Four HAL members attended an impromptu star party last night at Alpha Ridge Park.  The northern half of the sky was cloudy between 10:00 and 11:00, but the skies were otherwise clear.  Transparency was below average (19.14 mpas on the SQM-L meter at 11:30 PM) but seeing seemed to be about average.

There was a group of about 8 people playing tennis after dusk on the court south of the parking lot.  They had set up a few banks of very bright portable outdoor lighting so that they could play at night.  I had encountered this same group trying to play by the light of cellphone flashlights before a star party last month, but they now had a significant upgrade to their lighting.  I asked them if they could please pack up their lights and leave at about 8:00.  They left 20 minutes later, but there was still a woman and two children running around in the playground area, so I also asked them if they could please leave so that I could turn out the park lights and close the gate.  I was finally able to get the star party started around 8:30.

José G. was imaging with his Seestar, but I didn’t get over to ask him how it was going before he left.  Mike was working on getting his new Celestron Edge HD set up for imaging.  Joey was completing his ongoing project of imaging the Iris Nebula with some luminance data.

I set up my Orion Eon 80mm refractor and experimented with using its Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi mount without an alignment. This is an option as long as the mount is level and the telescope is pointed at the horizon due north when powered on. It’s kind of ironic that I was doing this, since I’ve put so much effort into getting the best possible alignments when observing with this setup.   I commanded the mount to point the telescope at the moon, and it went right to it and tracked it very well. I then viewed 3 of the best nearby double stars in Scorpius (beta, nu and xi). Then I switched over to my 8″ Starsense Explorer Dob after the moon had set and spent some time looking at globular clusters M92 and M15 at high magnifications.  I imaged NGC 6503 (aka O’Meara’s Hidden Treasure #85, the Lost In Space Galaxy) , a solitary galaxy on the edge of the Local Void, with my Vespera EAA scope and was also able to spot it visually with the Dob, albeit just barely with averted vision.

I was the last one left observing by 11:00 PM.  I continued for another half hour and then packed up.  I made sure that all of the restroom building doors were locked, turned on the park lights, locked up HALO and departed at 12:10 AM.

Ernie