Impromptu Star Party Report for October 7, 2026

[Ernie Morse]

Hi all,

Five HAL members enjoyed another great night of clear skies last night at Alpha Ridge Park.  Transparency was above average and seeing appeared to be about average.  Temperature was in the mid to high 50s and winds were calm.  It was pretty humid and I ended up wiping a lot of my gear down with a towel to soak up the dew before packing up.

Shaun imaged the Dumbbell Nebula (M27) with his new Dwarf 3 EAA telescope.  This was his third consecutive night of imaging at an impromptu star party!

José G. was imaging with a Seestar S50.  He got some results on the Andromeda Nebula (M31) but was noticing a lot of sub-exposures being dropped, possibly due to trails from airplanes and satellites.  There did seem to be an unusually high number of airplanes in the sky, right up until midnight.

Ken was working with his Seestar S50 but was unfortunately unable to collect any data with it.

Another HAL member attended, but left before I made my way over to chat with him.  I think it was Keith with his 130mm Celestron Starsense Explorer Newtonian, but I'm not sure.

I viewed a couple of small planetary nebulae (Turtle Nebula in Hercules and Emerald Eye Nebula in Ophiuchus), a few open clusters and the globular cluster M15, then I finished the night with a couple of my favorite double stars (Almach in Andromeda and Miram in Perseus) and the Double Cluster in Perseus with my 8" Celestron Starsense Explorer Dob.  I continued imaging IC 1318 (Butterfly Nebula) in Cygnus with my Vespera II EAA scope and now have 2.25 hours of data with a goal of getting 6 hours.

My SQM-L reading was 19.34 at 11:30, which is the same as I measured during Monday night's impromptu.

I was the only one left by 10:30 and observed for another hour before starting to pack up.  I turned on the park lights, locked up HALO and the restroom building, locked the park gate and departed at 12:20 AM.

Ernie