(The One with a Strawberry Moon and Suboptimal Conditions)

It was a hot day and evening, and seven HAL members and guests enjoyed the night of the Strawberry Moon for an impromptu star party at Alpha Ridge Park. The skies were mostly clear but very hazy, resulting in poor transparency; this is typical for a triple-H — hot, hazy, and humid — summer day in Maryland. Also common with triple-H days is good seeing, and the atmosphere was steady most of the night. The Full Moon was low in the southeast at sunset and added greatly to the sky brightness, so with the poor transparency it was not a night for visual observations of faint fuzzies.

Richard used his Televue TV-85 APO doublet refractor to tour the sky. Ernie viewed with a Celestron 8-inch StarSense Newtonian and concentrated on double stars and open clusters — he observed the double stars Epsilon Lyrae, Algieba (Gamma Leonis), Mizar (Zeta Ursae Majoris), the open cluster Caldwell 37 (NGC 6885) in Vulpecula, and the Coathanger asterism (Brocchi’s Cluster) in Vulpecula.

We had two Loyola students show up looking for a place to look at the stars, so they camped out in a corner of the parking lot and did their thing. I told them about HAL and gave them business cards; they sounded interested in checking us out further.

The remaining three members were imaging. Alvin used an SVBONY 80mm refractor to image M4 (globular cluster in Scorpius) plus a nearby reflection nebula, with the primary goal being the reflection nebula. However, he fell victim to the bright skies and poor transparency and went to plan B, the North America Nebula in Cygnus, with much greater success. Anil used his Stellarvue 102P refractor to image the Pelican Nebula in Cygnus using narrowband (SHO) filters, while I gathered H-alpha images of M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy) in Canes Venatici with my 8-inch RC in hopes of using it for the June Discord Object of the Month, and an hour of LRGB of M13 (globular cluster) in Hercules.

Thanks to the members who came out for the somewhat disappointing conditions; I enjoyed chatting with each of you and hope see you all again on a clear night soon.

Anil and I locked the gate at 3:50am.

Wayne B.