Black Star Canyon Star Party Recap – Saturday July 19th, 2014

We had a small line of about 5 cars waiting to get into the BSC Star Party site at 7:30 pm and when we opened the gate. A few more cars slipped in before dark and people set up scopes as the sky was fairly clear.

As the sun set, I put my Meade ETX 125 through a mock set up and then directed it to point at Saturn. Soon I could see Saturn and the scope was not far off so I slewed it to the planet and synched the scope. It looked spectacular at 8:15 pm and Titan could be seen above Saturn.

Others also were viewing Saturn and then Mars. Val had a great 150X view of Saturn on his new Celestron scope he purchased at OPT this past weekend at a bargain price during the Astronomy Expo. Jim was nearby but not sure what he was viewing. Sam was viewing Arcturus and Mars and I could hardly tell them apart.

I don’t think Ves or Don ever had time to align their scopes before the sky clouded over. At least newcomer Gerry got to talk to them about their telescopes and prior to that, he did see Saturn in our scope. Susan & her husband did set up a scope and then had some food at one of the picnic tables. I know they got to look at Saturn.

Unfortunately the horizon started to cloud up around 8:45pm and in just minutes the entire sky was covered. But we had seen a few objects by then so at least we were not skunked.

We ended up having 10 cars come out and counted about 14 people. The gate was closed around 9:45 pm and the temperature was a mild 66 F.

Steve