Julian Star Party, Menghini Winery, Orchard Inn B&B, Double Star Albireo and Epsilon Lyrae and Mizar, Visible Milky Way, Mt. Laguna AFB,

Well this week we were offsite at the Star Festival in Julian.  Astronomer assistant Danny was sent to vacation with Bob in Costa Mesa.  Resident astronomer Peggy concentrated on doing binocular observation and tried using my camera tripod with tilt/pan head to support the weight of the binoculars.  Resident astronomer George tried to build on his success in alignment and last week of observing globular clusters by aligning successfully once again and observing

Fun in Julian at Julian Star Festival and first images M4, M7, M22, NGC457, and M13 and even possibly Neptune?

Greetings from Palmia Observatory

This week has finally culminated in some observing success and photos after finally getting a good polar alignment.  But first, a quick reminder about the upcoming star festival in Julian this next weekend, August 13-15.  This is a great opportunity to see some stars, check out all the vendors, have some apple pie and wake up in a bed and breakfast.  Check out http://julianstarfest.com

Well, as I mentioned last time I was having a hard time getting a good alignment and finally had a breakthrough at the Black Star canyon star party.  Amateur astronomer David had put me on to some YouTube videos going over alignment and I found

Poor weather, OCA Star Party, Julian Star Party , fantastic book by OCA author, Cresent Venus and observing bright lights outside the aircraft window

It's been poor weather for night time observing for about 3 weeks now and too hot for any solar observing.  Luckily, the OCA star party on Saturday had pretty decent weather and we had fun there.  But first before talking about that, lets first check the calendar.

Where are you going to be Saturday, July 15?  Well, be sure to check what New Horizon's spacecraft phones home about the environs of Pluto.  What will we see?

Where are you going to be August 14-15?  If you're in the neighborhood check out the Star festival in Julian.  There will lots of scopes and a couple of days of vendors and lectures.  Should be fun if

Missed SAS conference (we were on vacation, darn!), but good times at Black Star Canyon star party

Greetings from Palmia Observatory,

Finally, we had a chance to do some astro viewing at the Black Star Canyon OCA event, but first, a few other introductory topics.  It was good after being away on vacation to pack up the scope, but I recalled I had to miss the Society of Astronomical Sciences (SAS) annual conference.  Darn it, the conference in Ontario, where hundreds of a amateurs gather to review the latest news about amateur contributions to real science, etc, just happened to be scheduled right in the middle of our vacation cruise.  I attended the conference last year and met

Offsite observing on the Danube River and puzzling sign showing maybe? special relativity?

Well, as you know we are off site and not at the observatory, but instead are in Nurenberg, which was the final destination of our Danube river cruise, which started in Budapest.  Wow, it has been a fantastic journey with fun on the river, great history, great people, and great food, but we are ready to be home again.

We didn't do any astro observing, not because we didn't look up, but mostly because we had high clouds at night.  We were able to see Jupiter and Venus, but not a lot of other stars.  Surprisingly, there seemed to be opportunities of dark skies, but the clouds