I was planning on going to the park early Saturday morning, but decided that I'd go Friday night instead. I would have had to leave home very early Saturday morning to arrive in time for the start of the park enhancement projects, and I didn't want to feel too drained. There was one other camper on the field when I finally arrived Friday night around 11pm. The sky was clear, but the wind was blowing like crazy, so I decided not to set up my scope. It was quite an experience getting my tent up by myself with the wind blowing so bad. Later, John O'Hara showed up - that makes at least three people for tomorrow's work!

Saturday brought sunny skies and a nice group of volunteers to help with the tree plantings. The work started around 10am and ended mid-afternoon. Afterwards, I headed back to the field and setup the rest of my site. After dark, I resumed hunting down objects from the Herschel 400 list. I had to revisit NGC3412. Last weekend, I incorrectly observed NGC3419 instead of 3412. I would only end up with 4 galaxies in my log before thin haze killed transparency. I spent the rest of the night scope hopping and talking with friends on the field. I called it a night around 3:30am.

On Sunday, most people left, leaving Gary Honis, Tom Whiting, Elliott McKinley, and a couple other observers to try our luck with Sunday night. I had a good time just sitting around talking with the others for most of the day.

By nightfall, the skies cleared (mostly) and we were treated to some good views of the GRS on Jupiter and a nice crescent moon. After the sky darkened, I got back to work on the Herschel list. That night, I managed to bag seven more objects before the skies turned hazy again.

The last Herschel object I viewed brought some excitement. A galaxy in Ursa Minor, NGC6217 appeared to have a "double stellar" core. I confirmed what I saw with Gary Honis' 20" dob. Whenever I view a galaxy on the list that has stars superimposed on it's glow, I'm compelled to check it against a picture - you never know when you'll discover that supernova in some far off galaxy! Unfortunately, 6217 is not in Vickers' Atlas. So off to the reference books we went before finally finding a description and (not-so-clear) sketch showing what we saw in the eyepiece. Oh well, maybe next time.

Monday morning, Gary and I were the only two left on the field. By 9:30 we were leaving the park, beating the rain by no more than 10 minutes.

Here are some images from the observing field. Click on an image to enlarge.

From left to right: Gary, Francis, Allen	The observing field, Saturday evening.
Gary clearing the grass from his azimuth bearing.	Sunset on Saturday.
The waxing crescent on Saturday.	Sunrays on Sunday afternoon.
Earthshine and Saturn at upper left.	Gary getting ready to image the Moon.