(The One with Over a Dozen Members)

We had a successful impromptu star party Monday night, January 27, in the cold but calm conditions. More than a dozen HAL members attended, and there was a mix of visual observing, imaging, and engineering activities among the attendees. Transparency was pretty good, but seeing was below average and the sky was rather bright — my Sky Quality Meter (SQM) reported a brightness of about 19.4 mag/arcsec^2. This is happening frequently, and I am unsure of the cause. It could be the solar activity level causing an increase in sky glow, maybe there was a sufficient amount of remaining snow on the ground that more was reflected into the sky to be scattered, or maybe the light pollution has simply become worse.

Greg and Joanna stopped by for their first impromptu to check things out. Ernie observed the Jupiter shadow transit by Ganymede, followed by some deep-sky observing with his 8-inch Newtonian. He also tried to image with his EAA scope but had some technical difficulties and didn’t collect much data. Jeffrey made some visual observations, as did Sundar. Denise and Mike used binoculars to observe the Pleaides (M45).

James was imaging with a refractor, and Bianca gathered data in H-alpha and OIII on the Jellyfish Nebula using a small refractor and a color camera with a dual-band filter.

Chris did some work in HALO to re-familiarize himself with the equipment. John stopped by to compare the output of his DIY sky brightness meter with Ernie’s and my SQMs. The three devices differed by a couple of mag/arcsec^2, so one or more of us will need to calibrate our device to get an idea of what the actual sky brightness is. I spent the night trying to optimize the collimation and mirror separation on my 8-inch RC; I’m not sure if I succeeded.

Thanks to everyone who came out. It was nice seeing you, and I hope we can do it again soon.

Wayne Baggett