Saturday night’s Members-Only Star Party at Alpha Ridge Park was a great
success.  Approximately 20 club members, several of them at their first
HAL star party, ventured out with their scopes to enjoy the night sky.
High, and not so thin, clouds were present at sunset and were initially
rather discouraging, but they cleared out by about 11:15pm and the rest
of the night was free of clouds. Temperatures were pleasantly warm, and
the humidity was not too bad.  As is typical with hot, hazy, and humid
conditions, the transparency was not great but the seeing was better
than average. Many people were doing visual observations of a wide
variety of objects, with double stars, clusters, and nebulae being the
most common.  Scopes ranged from 70mm refractors to an 11-inch SCT.
There was at least one Electronically-Assisted Astronomy (EAA) scope
doing some imaging, and at least three other members imaging with more
traditional rigs.  I spent my night imaging the globular cluster M13 in
Hercules, and the attached image shows the result of three hours of
exposure time.  Observing continued until about 2:45am.

After closing the park gate at 3:45am, I saw the Moon near a bright
planet that I concluded was Jupiter — it had a yellowish tint and
wasn’t as bright as Venus, which also shows as a brilliant white color.
However, upon arriving home I discovered that the planet was, indeed,
Venus, so the color and the dimness was likely due to the presence of
high-altitude wildfire smoke.

It was nice to see so many new members come out for the night, as well
as the old hands who were there.  Hopefully we can get together again soon.

Wayne