Packed up for travel to Death Valley for Las Vegas Astronomy Club star party, visitors astonished by chance to see the moon in the viewer

Well, this week we packed up a lot of astronomical equipment and headed off to Death Valley for a star party at Furnace Creek.  It was a lot of fun.  We caravanned with friends, Marty and Bonnie, who are also fellow astronomers and hams.  Having the radios along provided a lot of fun and versatility for observing the stars and the sights of Death Valley.  I hadn't been To Death Valley for over 30 years and it was a lot fun to be there again.

The star party sponsored by the Las Vegas Astronomy club was attended by 30-40 telescope operators, about 1/2 from the LV club, others from all over the U.S.  The event was open to the public and hundreds of visitors

OCA meeting to talk about how smallest galaxies form, saw the less than interesting movie "The Principle", and still trying to resolve solar scope focusing problems

Greetings from Palmia Observatory,
 First, a couple of announcements.  For those of you in Orange County, the
 OCA General meeting is tomorrow, Friday, and a professor from UCI will be
 talking about:  How do the smallest galaxies form?  It should be great.  See
 some of you there.

 Second, I saw an interesting cosmology documentary at the movie theater
 today titled "The Principle".  I was a little worried about it initially
because the author/producers are advocates of geocentrism, which says the
earth is at

Free moons course at futurelearn and trying to capture plane in front of moon

Well, still not ready to follow up on getting a picture of Lovejoy.  I did make some progress on taking solar hydrogen alpha pictures though.  I found by reading the telescope manual (drats, yes I went back and did it) that there was a few extra millimeters of play in the draw tube assembly.  I retrieved those 3-4 mm, but it still wasn't enough to get