It was a surprisingly cool night on Friday for the HAL impromptu star
party — several people, including me, wished they had brought a light
jacket as the temperature dropped to about 64 degF by midnight.  Winds
were nonexistent and there was more moisture than predicted, but
conditions were not bad at all and dew didn’t stop anyone from
observing.  The biggest issues were the nine day old Moon and wildfire
smoke, creating unusually bright skies even for Alpha Ridge Park.  As a
testament to the impact of the smoke, the Moon had a yellowish tint all
night.  My Sky Quality meter registered 19.32 mag/square-arcsec at about
11:45pm (about an hour after the end of astronomical twilight) with the
Moon low in the southwest, and it dropped to 19.58 mag/square-arcsec by
1:15am, a little before Moonset.  After the Moon had set, it reported
19.71 mag/square-arcsec.  This is still brighter than usual, and
probably reflects the light pollution scattering from the smoke.  While
the transparency was less than optimal, the seeing was really good, and
was steady all night.  My stars were unusually small in the images, and
my guiding was as good as I’ve ever experienced.

Six HAL members attended the party, with four doing visual observing and
two doing imaging.  Jamie and his wife observed the Moon and other
objects with a small scope on an alta-azimuth mount, and Robert observed
the Moon with a 130mm Newtonian.  Ernie observed double stars in Ursa
Major, Canes Venatici, Coma Bernices, and some other areas with his
8-inch Newtonian.  Mike imaged the North America Nebula in Cygnus with
his 80mm Svbony refractor, while I added three more hours of LRGB data
on M13 (Hercules Cluster) with my 8-inch RC.

It was nice to see all the members who came out for the night; hopefully
we can get together again soon.

Wayne