Turned out to be quite a nice night. Had a really good turnout for the event, Galina and Dale gave a entertaining talk to the gathering crowd while Gene, Ron, Mike and his family and myself setup the equipment.
Gene had his Homebuilt 10" Dob, Ron had the clubs 12.5" Dob, Mike had his 10" LX200 ACF and a ETX125 scope and I had my 10" LX200 Classic. Ron was taking some pictures which I hope to post soon, (hint, hint) Anyway,

Florida News On July 3rd 2009. BAS ( Brevard Astronomical Society ) is having a Solar / Star Party at the Space Coast Stadium from 3:pm till 11 PM or later. As people are going into the stadium they can stop and take a look at the Sun, I sure do hope we have a few Sun Spots to look at! If not we do have a 12" SCT scope with a Solar filter to look at Sun prominence. Water, snacks, shade, and electric power will be provided.
After the game we will be ready for the crowds wanting to see the Moon, and other bright Star Clusters and Constellations. We always have huge crowds at this events. Come one come all! And have a great time Observing the Heavens!
Point of contact: Oscar 321-266-2019
So If you have a few hours to spare, Please come and bring your solar filters, And Telescopes, remember we will have a bunch of children and elderly persons, that will require the aid of a small 2 or 3 step ladder.
As always Thank-you for your support! My first Post I hope It works!

Hello Members:

Trying to find scope volunteers at the last minute to support a Star Party is hard to do, ......... espeacially when the request comes in 2 days before the event was to take place. Well It happened to me again!
On the way to my June BAS meeting , I got a cell phone call from Scout Master Michael Myjak, He wanted to know if It was possible to have a Star Party and to help his scouts with some of the Astronomy requirements so they could get their Cub Scout Belt Loop, and Astronomy Pin. I did let him know that It was almost impossible to get any body to volunteer this close to the due date. All our BAS Scope volunteers already had other things planned for the weekend. well all I could tell Michael was "I will mention the Sar Party during our BAS meeting," hopefully we will get at least 2 people to support the event, I did tell him that I will put the word out and hope for the best! Gary Scott posted the event. Thx.

Any way to make a long story short, I want to say a BIG Thanks to my brother in Law Doug Sumerlin, I called him the night before the event and asked him if he and his telescope would be avaialbe Friday night, I didn't get an answer, I told him if you can make it, to be there at 7 pm.

Friday came fast, I loaded up my 10" f 4.5 Dob telescope, some notes, handouts, BAS busines cards, BCC planetary 1 dollar off movie tickets, and hoped for the best. I got to the park around 6:45 pm looked around the pavillion and didn't recognized anyone. I looked up towards the sky, the Skies were BLUE!! no clouds ,,,

Turned out to be really a nice night out. A little wind, but for the most part it just kept the mosquitoes away. Gene, Galina and her daughter were there and Joe and Maria, and Karen and myself. The equipment on hand was Gene's 10 and his 10x30 canon IS Binoculars, my 10" and Karens 15x70 Binoculars. The first Item reeled in was Saturn and 3 of it's moons. Rhea, Tethys and Titan. So the atmosphere was pretty stable, then we went for Omega Centauri, it was still too much light to really resolve anything of this globular...

Did anyone happen to see an absolutely beautiful 20" RC Cassegrain built by Preston Engebretson from Houston? It's a masterpiece in metal and CF, with all metal parts anodized gold colored. I helped Preston quite a bit in designing this scope, including optimizing the conical primary and secondary baffle tubes. The work is thoroughly documented in Cloudy Nights in the ATM forum.

I wasn't able to attend TSP this year, and was hoping to hear impressions from people that had seen Preston's scope and had viewed through it.

TSP is just getting better and better. I can imagine the total dollar value of all the scopes and CCD cameras there would easily approach half a million dollars or more. What a difference from when I was going in 1982-3 timeframe when so many scopes were homemade and low-cost.

Mike