I just wanted to thank those that were able to attend the club's no-frills party at Spruce Knob. We had 6 members and one former member of the club (he had no idea we were going to be there) show up for Saturday night.

Curt and I were there from Thursday on. Charles (a former member) showed up on Friday afternoon. Matt arrived in the early afternoon on Saturday. He was closely followed by Brent and Alex . Finally, Tom showed up about 10:30 on Saturday night. We were all joined by a member of the Southern Maryland Astronomy Club (Jim).

Thursday night was mostly cloudy with some strong t-storms. We did not even get the scopes out. But the storms were impressive to watch at 4300 feet.

Friday night was filled with sucker holes. Just enough to get our scopes out but not enough to get any real observing in. We got word that it cleared just a bit at about 4am, but by then we had given up.

Saturday, we got some solar observing in during the day. It was clear and cool (high hit about 75). As twilight arrived the high clouds moved out and we got a spectacular evening. The temp quickly dropped into the 50's and we got a little dew. It eased at about 10pm and was never really a big problem.

The sky was as dark as I have seen on the East Coast. We had some air glow on the horizon and an occasional passing cloud (small and very dark) but M33 was visible to the naked eye. The milky way was so bright that it would cast shadows. It got noticably darker in our meadow when the milky way finally went behind the trees.

We were catching about 20 - 30 meteors per hour, most very bright and all while I was looking throught he eyepiece (the running joke). Some were perseids, but the sporatics seem to be the best.

I was able to bag (and draw) about 15 Herschel's including a 13th mag planetary in Sagittarius that had been giving me fits. Jupiter was big and so bright it ruined your night vision in a scope.

All in all it was a good little party with a great group of folks. If there is interest, we might try another one of these next year.