At 7PM it was 78 F out at Black Star Canyon and it was 72 F when the last person left. We had 4 Irvine Nature Conservancy members out to help with the guests but only two of their guest families showed up. We also had 4 other guest families show up and all parked up on Black Star Canyon road so our astronomers had a place to park near their telescopes. We had at least 18 OCA member cars come out even though it was the Labor Day weekend and there was also a star party at Anza.

Besides being warm, it was also nice and clear and fairly dark on the New Moon night. We did see the 1st pass of the Hubble Space Telescope go over right on time at 7:55 PM which seemed to intrigue the visitors. There were no visitors when the second pass went over and no one bothered to look for it.

We did see bright Venus just before it went down and Jupiter was spectacular all evening with some seeing the red spot. Later, we watched as Moon Io slipped behind the planet. We also saw Uranus and Neptune but they were very small discs at 73X in my ETX125. We also saw M8 & M23 plus a lot of other Messier objects. M57 was a favorite with some of our visitors.