Star party at the Nielson Observatory with the Black River Astronomical Society. Good turnout: we had a lot of visitors of all ages. They installed a new 14″ Celestron Cassegrain with equatorial mount – this was donated by Oberlin College dept of science. Shown here is the origional 1980’s model Celeston: picture of the new telescope will be posted soon.

This was a night of visual observing only – no CCD cameras: it is nice to get back to the basics without all of the technology and see those faint fuzzies first hand. M13, M57, sights in Cygnus and clusters in Sagittarius, finishing up with great views of Jupiter rising and the Andromeda galaxy. On the 14″, I observed the great red spot on Jupiter for the first time: it was easier to see due to the enhanced contrast produced by the dissapearance of the central cloud belts on the planet.