The gate was open when I arrived at BSC at 5:15 PM as the Irvine Ranch Nature Conservancy docents were there already to insure their guests parked up on the road. It was warm and fairly cloudy but we were able to point scopes at Venus and the Moon as the Sun set, both were about 25% lit.

The sky cleared as it got dark and I gave an astronomy presentation and night sky tour and had guests look at Venus before they drifted off to look at Saturn, M42 and many other objects. Then we viewed Comet Lulin through binoculars and telescopes and noted it’s teardrop shape.

New member Jaden, just 9 years old, was finding all sorts of objects, like the crab Nebula and showing them to whoever wanted to see. We tried to split the end stars of Orion’s belt but were not able to split Alnitak even at 200X.  Mantika was easy to split, even at 50X. The Winter Alberio in Canus Major also was easy to split at 50X.

Another new member from Korea was the last to leave as he wants to see everything possible before he returns in August. I closed the gate about 11:30 PM when the temp had cooled to 46 F.