by Jeff Crilly
I just thought I'd drop you all a note about the palo alto foothills park star party...
It was a load of fun! This is the first time I had been up there for a star party. Initially, I was a bit taken back by the close quarters... it just didnt seem like there was enough space for scopes... however, it seemed to work out just fine...
The night started out somewhat cloudy, but we had ok views of the moon, jupiter, and venus. Lots of public appreciation... From sunset until about 10:30 I was pretty busy showing folks the moon, jupiter, and, at time, M51 and M81/82 through the holes. Later (around 11pm) the clouds cleared quite a bit and we looked at the brighter stuff and Ikeya/Zhang. The night was capped off by a decent iridium flare just east of Vega around 11pm.