TAC-Shasta members,

Last night the Shasta Astronomy Club hosted a Mars Party at the
Whiskeytown Lake Mines Trail parking lot. It was by far the largest
public star party the club has hosted. It has been in the Redding
paper for several weeks AND the planetarium shows for the last two
weeks publisized it also. Someone estimated over 300 were there at
the peak. Cars were parked for 1/4 mile in each direction from the
parking lot. Usually we have around 50 people at most! There were
lines of 20+ people at every telescope. Most of us showed double
stars like Albireo, globular clusters and nebulae until Mars rose
above the trees around 10:15. Even though the atmosphere made for
poor viewing that early, most of the public saw the southern ice cap.

Viewing improved as Mars rose. By 11:00 most of the public had left,
leaving us "hard-core" observers. We were treated to views of Mars
that wavered in and out of focus, but we were able to make out the
southern maria and some northern, smaller maria also. A blue filter,
like a 80A seemed to bring out the ice cap the best, but the best
views of the maria were with an orange filter. I have a 21, but
Roger's deeper orange 25 gave even more contrast. I spent most of
the time looking at Mars and trying different filters, eyepieces and
my Teleview 2.5X. I took some photos with a Nikon CoolPic4300, also.

Later, the "bino rhino" viewers came out as Tom, Eric and Roger
played "Who can get the best view" with M13 and the double cluster
in Perseus. Bob Thompson ajudicated.

So... Eric Maynes will be in the parking lot at the foot of the
trail to the peak of Mount Lassen for a "Mars Party" on Wednesday,
August 27th. I plan on being there, too. It is probably easiest to
get there by taking 36 from Red Bluff to the south entrance of the
park. The parking lot is about 1.5 miles past the Bumpass Hell
parking lot. There is a $10 entrance fee, but if you are local, you
may want to get the $20 one year pass that is good for both Lassen
and Whiskeytown Lake. So if you want to join us, come on up!

BTW, I will bring the fixings for Ibarra hot chocolate!

Carpe Noctem
(Sieze the night!)

Michael Huster