John B and I arrived a little before 8 PM. We had the 2 society's Sky-Watcher 8" Dobsonians in tow. Stuart set up a bit later and let his fork-mounted LX200 find and level itself. Ken arrived (courtesy Zip). Holy cow: Millie and Dietmar showed up! Very cool. Millie had her trusty binoculars at the ready and started picking off Messiers. At some point—I missed when exactly—Darlene and Clive arrived. They operated an Antares 520 8" Dob. Another surprise visitor for the evening was Ed—The Budget Astronomer—Hitchcock! He was staying with family in the 'hood and surprised himself at how proximal he was to the park...
photo by Stuart Norman
Over the course of the evening, we looked at the Moon, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, M13, M11, M31, and a whack of double stars including Albireo, γ (gamma) Delphinus, Cor Caroli, Polaris, Izar, β (beta) Andromeda, and, of course, the Tim Horton star (aka the Double-Double in Lyra).
Park visitors enjoyed the views.
The most incredible event: catching Dietmar at an eyepiece!
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Millie always amazes me at her general knowledge of the sky, constellations, how she knows exactly where Messier objects are. She seemed amazed by my ability to bull's eye double stars. Funny how it goes.
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Stuart has a couple of other shots on his flickr page...
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