2025 Star Party Reports
Impromptu Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 2/01/2025
(The One with Clear, Cold Skies and a Mystery Car)
Four HAL members showed up to enjoy the clear skies at Alpha Ridge last night. Three were successful, but one suffered the heartbreak of technical difficulties. Happily, there were no incidents of equipment being blown away by high winds. Mike imaged the Fish Head Nebula (IC 1795, adjacent to the Heart Nebula) in Cassiopeia and the Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380) in Cepheus. The rest of us focused our imaging on Monoceros and Canis Major in the southern skies. Shrikant got nice results on the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) in Monoceros, while I started over on the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) and surrounding nebulosity and clusters on the Monoceros-Canis Major border with a redrawn 3.1 x 3.1-degree mosaic on the Vespera. Jose had planned to image the Thor’s Helmet Nebula (NGC 2359) just over the border in Canis Major, but he wasn’t able to get any data due to his ASIAIR refusing to connect to WiFi. He thinks he may have to go old-school and plug it in via Ethernet, but is going to troubleshoot the problem at home. Hopefully, that issue will be resolved before our next star party. I made some visual observations of various open clusters in Taurus and Perseus (NGCs 1342, 1647, 1807, 1817) with the Dob, partially inspired by the Suburban Stargazer column in the January issue of Sky & Telescope, and also revisited one of the all-time greats, the Double Cluster (Caldwell 14) in Perseus. There was an issue early on with someone who left his car parked beside the road just inside the entrance and went off wandering around the park. He was nowhere in sight by the time dusk fell, so I called the ranger, who said she’d be there in about 30 minutes. Fortunately, he returned to his car and left around 6:20, so I called off the ranger visit. It was getting colder and windier around 10:00, so Shrikant and I decided to call it a night. I locked up HALO and the park and we left around 10:35. Ernie MorseImpromptu Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 1/29/2025
(The One with High Winds and a New Impromptu Keyholder)
The high winds made for a frustrating star party experience last night. Mike had planned to image the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) in Cassiopeia with his 8″ SCT and Shrikant was going to observe the Orion Nebula with his 72mm refractor. Unfortunately, the gusty winds made guiding impossible. One particularly strong gust, which I think must’ve been over 20 mph, even moved Mike’s laptop across his table! My Vespera was able to collect an hour’s worth of data on a mosaic of the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) in Monoceros and adjacent open clusters NGC 2335 and NGC 2343, although the wind caused a high rejection rate (50%) of the 10s sub exposures. Unfortunately, the mosaic framing was off a bit, so I’m missing half of one of the seagull’s wings. The problem is that IC 2177 technically refers to just the head of the seagull, and the surrounding nebulosity is not shown in the Vespera app interface. I’ll probably just discard the data and restart with a better framing next time. Both Shrikant and Mike decided to leave around 8:00, but Mike discovered that someone (hopefully a park ranger) had locked the gate. I went out to unlock it for them. When I returned, I found that the top foam layer of my eyepiece case had blown away! I looked around the immediate area, but didn’t find it. I was planning on just closing up the park at that point, but my 8″ Dob was all set up, and I hadn’t actually observed anything with it yet, so I decided to take a quick look at a few targets. I observed the triple star Beta Monocerotis (aka Herschel’s Wonder Star), double stars Iota Orionis and Struve 747 and then the Orion Nebula, which was absolutely magnifcent and gorgeous at 85X with a UHC filter. It was a real shame that it was so windy, as the skies were very clear, transparency was good and it wasn’t very cold. Seeing wasn’t great, and I had a difficult time splitting the BC pair (3″ separation) of Beta Monocerotis at 170X. I then turned on the park lights, searched all over the parking lot for my foam layer (no luck), and then closed up HALO and the park by around 9:45. Thanks to Shrikant and Mike for coming out and making a valiant effort. Hope we all have better luck next time! Ernie MorseImpromptu Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 1/27/2025
(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 BaggettImpromptu Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 1/01/2025
(The One that Kicked Off the New Year)
We had our first impromptu Star party of the year on the first night of 2025. I got at alpha ridge park at 4:30 pm and closed it around 7:30 pm. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate as clouds came in and out repeatedly due to the fast winds, giving us only a few patches of clear sky every now and then. We had 5 members showing up, and 2 of them were first time attendees. Welcome to both and I hope to see you around often. Despite the clouds, we had some nice conversations about equipment so I think it was a good time after all. We have a snow storm coming but I’ll be looking out for the next good night to have another star party. Jose Urias