Black Star Canyon Star Party Recap – Saturday August 23rd, 2014

We arrived at the BSC star party site at 7 pm and found the gate had been opened by the Nature Conservancy docents who had allowed OCA astronomers to drive in and park. This created a bit of a mess as the cars were not parked tightly between the rock turning circles. I was able to clean up some of the parking problems but hope we didn’t have anyone drive off because there wasn’t enough room for them to park.

After the sun set, I put my Meade 6″ LightSwitch through a manual alignment using Arcturus and Altair about 8 pm. By then, Saturn was visible and looked great. During the night we viewed Mars, Uranus & Neptune along with M22, M8 & M28 around Sagittarius. Bonnie just had to see Albireo and the Andromeda Galaxy too.

Others also were viewing Saturn and Mars. Val had his bargain telescope set up as did Sam. Larry set up his 9.25″ big Celestron set up next to us showing great views of many objects. Butch was there as was Jonathan & Jennifer.

Jeff & Susan Winston showed up again as did Ves, Don McClelland, Rob McKenzie and Martin. Jim Smith & Penny Harris had fun and Manu came for the first time as did Allan & Joya. Edward Hickman seemed to have fun and Yongsoo Kim brought out an 8″ scope he picked up from Bob Buchheim.

Around 9 pm, the Nature Conservancy hiking group returned and many had fun looking through the telescopes at amazing objects. But most said their favorite was watching the ISS (International Space Station) fly over just after 9:15 pm.

Unlike last month’s star party, the night sky was dark and clear up until 11:30 pm. But then it clouded over quickly after most people had gone home.

We ended up having 21 cars come out and counted about 45 people. The gate was closed just after midnight and the temperature was a mild 60 F.

Steve