Hassi opened the gate before 7:30 as there was a long line of cars waiting when he got there…and he knew I might be late as was competing in a National Table Tennis Tournament. It was a warm 66 F evening and the sky was clear so we were anticipating great viewing, and we were not dissapointed.

The secret USAF X-37B (Mag 3.2) passed over right on schedule at 9:21 and thanks to super satellite spotter Katie for seeing it first. Venus was a bright Mag -3.9 and 80% lit showing up first and later we saw spectacular views of Saturn.  Mars was just above Regulus.

M13 in Hercules was spectacular while M4 (TheCat’s Eye) next to Antares was not all that bright. Then we went galaxy hunting and could see M81 & M82 in a 40 mm eyepiece. I heard others were looking at M63, M94 & M106 and many other galaxies.

New members Jean & Linda enjoyed their first OCA star party and Jean’s 8″ DOBS had a nice view of blue & gold double star Alberio in Cygnus. The view of M13 at about 200X was spectacular. We also had a new member set up his Meade ETX 125 and with help from Tom Drouet, he saw Saturn through his scope for the first time. Another new young member set up next to me and was having a great time showing people many exciting objects.

Greg Schedcik had a new 13″ Celestron set up and daughter Katie and he were having a great time seeing objects much brighter than through their old scope. Dave also had his 13″ Celestron scope set up so we had some nice large aperture scopes at Black Star.

Steve