by Jane Houston Jones
We had a nice clear dark night in Kenwood, between Sonoma and Santa Rosa tonight. A great night for a young astronomers star party. We quickly finished the indoor meeting and the short talk about rainbows, haloes and sundogs, and then everyone got their telescopes out. Soon there was a nice line up of 6 inch f/7 Striking Sparks telescopes set up in the parking lot. The outdoor lights were turned off so it was quite dark.
Several of the "adult" Sonoma County Astronomical Society members were there too, and some even brought their kids! We all observed planets, comets and watched an interesting quad of satellites in a corvus-shaped formation traveling east to west at about 9:30 p.m. There were some great meteors, lots of satellites, even a few galaxies, clusters and planetary nebulae for all to see. It was great to see the kids holding up their planispheres, and announcing their next target, and going for them. Some of these kids have only had their telescopes since late March, when they were awarded their scopes on Striking Sparks Day.
I checked Telrad alignment and collimation of several 'scopes, and was pleased with what I saw. The popcorn and hot cocoa were good too. I was surprised to see it was 10:00 p.m. when the last kid packed up his or her telescope to go home. These are little kids who have been in school today. Totally clear up here in the northern territories. Even in the Petaluma fog streamline it was clear. How was the observing elsewhere?