The gate was opened early by the Nature Conservancy who led a group of visitors down the road to see the bat caves. As darkness fell, they came back and joined the star party.

We did observe the first Iridium Flare at 9:44 pm but missed all the others. The biggest attraction was Saturn and two moons were clearly visible. Matt was imaging Saturn and has that work posted on the OCA website home page.

The Ring Nebula (M57) looked great and the visitors liked seeing the double star Albireo. The M4 Cat’s Eye globular cluster was faint but the M6 Butterfly open cluster and the M7 open cluster were spectacular.

With the 90% humidity, some scopes without dew guards were covered with moisture later in the evening and the temperature did fall to 50 F by the time I closed e gate at midnight.