We had a successful impromptu star party Sunday night, March 2, in the
cold but mostly clear weather. There were some high clouds around at
sunset, but they had moved out by about 7:45pm and it stayed clear until
it wasn’t. Temperatures were below freezing all night, starting at
31degF as I started observing and dropping to about 20degF by the time I
finished. Transparency was about average but the seeing was below average.

Four HAL members came to enjoy the evening, although three didn’t stay
very long. Relatively new members Lee and Maryanne stopped by briefly
to check out the location as they had never been to one of our star
parties before. Although they own an 11-inch Celestron SCT, they didn’t
bring it this time. They stayed for a while and chatted about astronomy
and our remarkably similar work experiences, and left before it got
truly dark. Gary brought his Celestron Origin 6-inch EAA scope and
started imaging NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis. Unfortunately, he had
trouble maintaining a WiFi connection with the scope, so he left by
8:45pm, leaving me alone. I continued imaging NGC 3718, a spiral galaxy
in Ursa Major, with my 8-inch RC scope.

I finished imaging at about 1:00am because a large bank of clouds moved
in. I locked the gate at 2:35am, after collecting flats and giving the
clouds a chance to clear up.

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

Wayne