Re: Pinnacles Star Party July 26 2025 Wrap Up.

[Rashi]

Hello all,

It was awesome to see many of you out on Saturday at Pinnacles!

• Huge thanks to Nikhil and Ed for organizing and hosting, and for giving me the chance to give my Star Chart Talk ... it was well received and went well! 
• Dave B - thank you for making space so I could fit my car into the line & for M31 views on your tablet
• Bob & Natti & Dave B & Nikhil - thank you for keeping an eye out on my stuff while I was doing the intro/star chart talk or walking around interacting with our attendees
• Mike M & Nikhil - thanks for calling out the supernova in NGC7331 ... after letting the SeeStar S50 run for a while we were able to spot it next to the core --> Live Stack - total time: 134mins [also attached image to thread]
• Ed - thanks for sharing beautiful views of M24 from your binos (stunning)
• Wolf - thanks for sharing views from your 18" Obsession DOB 
• Nikhil - thanks for sharing views of M7 and giving me the chance to to spot stars making the letter R smack in the middle of it (R for R - made my night)
• Chris - thanks for sharing stunning views of the Witch's broom and magged up Saturn from your 11" SCT (we competed a bit on how far we could push mag on our scopes - 11" SCT at ~x380/400vs 5" MAK at x280)
• Kanch - thanks for giving me company until 4:30ish, as I continued to pack and you called it a night and crawled into your cocoon in your car, and then again for having breakfast in the morning in Hollister
• I wrapped up packing around 5am, hint of twilight with fog all around - it was beautiful. Slept in the car, woke up a few times and the fog around was stunning. Pulled out my binos later and saw some beautiful creatures... California Quail, Blue Scrub Jay, Deer, Bunnies, Butterflies... sigh :)

Attached you will find: 

• A group picture (will share a few more once I have them uploaded)
• Image of Saturn with 4 moons (last minute spur of the moment capture at 4ish am with my 5" MAK, ASIAIR Pro, and ASI533MC Pro - wasn't expecting to image Saturn)
• and lastly the Supernova in NGC7331 with my SeeStar S50 (134 mins total with 10s exposures - live stack)

The Milky Way was stunning ... Thanks folks for taking pics and sharing. 

Enjoy the pics and see you all next time :) 

Clear skies and heavens above! 

--
Rashi G.
--

On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 10:14 AM Nikhil Tungare <ntun...@gmail.com> wrote:

A massive thanks to all the astronomers who helped out with the Pinnacles star party last night and to all the SJAA members who attended the event as a part of the general audience.
We had about 80 to 100 people who attended the event by my reckoning, registered either through the Meetup or Eventbrite (for SJAA members only) or the campers at the Pinnacles National park.

After a week-long trepidation around the weather, it turned out to be a complete non-issue all together. The clouds never showed up thankfully and the seeing stayed excellent throughout the night with nary a twinkling in the sky. The transparency stayed above average for most part of the night too. The one thing I was really worried about was the dew which didn't turn out to be an issue either. Temps were very pleasant, and no mosquitoes !

Earlier in the evening I had a sighting of a California Condor. It is such a majestic bird as it soared effortlessly across the thermals with barely any movement of its wingtips. Probably was the lucky charm for the night.

We had a fascinating assortment of telescopes last night ranging all the way from 2x54 binoculars, to Binocular telescopes, to SCTs, to Refractors, to EAA, to the big hulking Dobs.
Thanks a lot to Rashi for teeing off the event with a tour of the night sky which was extremely well received. There were a couple of bright satellite passes, one from the ISS and one from the Tiangong that Mike had given us a heads up on.

Most of the audience was awed by the naked eye view of the blazing Milky Way especially as it worked its way overhead. In the early part of the evening I showcased M7, M6 and the Coat Hanger in my binoculars with the Butterfly Cluster drawing the most Oohs. During the course of the night I showcased the False Comet, M24, M22, The Inkspot Nebula, Swan, Andromeda and Saturn and Neptune. After most of the general audience left I put up the Veil nebula through a UHC which looked like a black and white photograph. Similarly the Helix Nebula through OIII filters showed its distinctive double helix structure. Dumbbell showed its distinctive shape and colour. Swan nebula showed intricate mottling and "wake" in the form of a curved bow. 

One of the biggest thrills of the night was to look for the supernova in NGC 7331 through Mike's Dob. Sadly I couldn't see the supernova. However, what we did end up seeing was a 15.9 magnitude Galaxy PGC69281 as a faint glow to the NW which is really a testament to the optics of the telescope and the quality of the night sky. Sorry Mike for losing the field of view of NGC 7331 in my quest to search the Quintet. Kemble's cascade was a pretty sight in Rashi's binoculars. We saw quite a few shooting stars too, probably the Delta Aquarids or the early Perseids. The Pleiades were rising over the barn and were a truly beautiful sight as I packed up around 2AM. The drive back home early in the morning was very serene through the fog that rolled in overnight.

Sorry for disappointing a couple of SJAA members who had registered through Eventbrite hoping to set up their telescopes. As I had mentioned in my event description and also in the email sent by Carl, only the registered Volunteers can set up their telescopes at the Pinnacles Star party, this being a public event and not a members only observation event. If you would like to participate as a volunteer astronomer in the future, please do look out for an email that says "Pinnacles Volunteering Announcements" which will have a call for telescopes for the star party.  

Thanks a lot again everyone and I hope to see you all next month. Please feel free to drop me a note if you have any feedback. 

Regards,

Nikhil. 

[Ed Wong]

Hi Rashi, 

Thank you 🙏 it was great to see you do some observing with you. Thanks 🙏 for remembering to take pictures. 

Have a great day,

Ed 

On Jul 28, 2025, at 16:38, Rashi <rgir...@gmail.com> wrote:



<Saturn & 4 Moons_Rashi G_Pinnacles National Park_0419am_July27_2025.jpg>

<Supernova in NGC7331_Rashi_G_0343am_July27_2025.jpg>

<Pinnacles_Group_Pic_July26_2025.jpg>

[Nikhil Tungare]

Thanks a lot Rashi for the group picture, love it! Great image of the supernova. Looking at it now I feel that it needed even more mag than 200x to visually resolve it from the core. 

M7 is now permanently catalogued as Rashi's cluster in my books. Funny I had never noticed the "R" before. 

It was great observing with you and I hope you can join the next time too. 

Regards,

Nikhil. 

[Kal Krishnan]

I imaged the Wizard Nebula for an hour after the party. This object needs more time, but I was able to pull out a pretty decent result with what I had.

Kal.