Black Star Canyon Star Party Recap – Saturday November 22nd, 2014

We arrived at the BSC star party site at 4:15 pm and found 8 cars lined up and waiting. After the gate was opened, cars continued to show up even after dark. We ended up with 16 cars and 25 people.

Before the sun set, I put my Meade 6″ LightSwitch through a manual alignment and then directed it to show Mars which was not visible yet. The sky became pretty cloudy but cleared up about 6 pm. Later we viewed all the other visible planets: Uranus & Neptune. We also viewed double star Albireo and the Andromeda Galaxy and then star clusters M103 & M52.

Rob Mckenzie set up his big scope and showed us a great view of the Ring Nebula, M57, M31 & M15. Sam & was set up next to us and said he had a great time even though he left early.

Val brought his OPT bargain 4″ Celestron StarSeeker refractor and showed us great views of M2 & the Double Cluster, etc. Butch was set up next to Val and they went back and forth looking through their scopes.

Thomas Swan came with his 20″ Go-To DOB giving outstanding views of all the objects we were viewing. His friend Dave Ord, his daughter Emily & son Jack showed up too. Others attending were Scott, Kyla, Beccan, Max & Mike, Mike & Carol Epstein, Tom & Fran House, Roger Cotton, Paul Gracie, Yong Soo Kim & Yong Kyoo Kim and Matthew & Robert Dahms.

Hope I didn’t miss anyone and apologize for any names that are not spelled correctly.

The gate was closed about 10:30 pm after the last two people left when it got pretty cloudy and the temperature was a cool 49 F.

Steve