September 2026 Public Star Party Report

[David Stein]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Richard Ren 
Date: Sun, Sep 20, 2026 at 9:15 AM

All,

We had a wonderful public star party yesterday!

Regardless of a cloudy beginning, half of the sky opened between 7;20 and 9:00 pm.

More than 150 guests joined the event yesterday and 5 members set up their telescopes on-site. Hannah turned HALO into an amazing classroom where 30+ young astronomers enjoyed the moment. The Illig scope showed off the moon, the M57 ring nebula, the crescent nebula, and the recent supernova 2026aaiv in galaxy NGC 6331 44 million light years away!

As usual, Arjun hosted the solar system table and Krystal hosted the activity table. With HAL's lunar globe, we displayed the rough location of the "once-in-a century" McGetchin Crater on the HAL's lunar globe (1.35°N 67.18°E) discovered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter back in May 2024.

We started to wrap up around 9:20 pm without seeing any improvement in the sky conditions. I locked the park gate at 9:40 pm.

Clear skies,

Richard