Despite following the Labor Day weekend, the turnout for the September Sun Fun and Starwalk events was good. Starguides from the Texas Astronomical Society, Fort Worth Astronomical Society, and the South Plains Astronomy Club of Lubbock were in attendance to help.

The days' activities began with a splendid view in H-Alpha of the solar prominences and white-light view of the photosphere. Terrie Rocha brought her 10" Starfinder Dobson and a full aperture Thousand Oaks filter. The exciting view of the sunspots was very enjoyable. The number of spots is still high as the Sun is quietening from it's maximum cycle. Terrie mentioned the lessening of activity in the large group 96. I was intrigued by the spread out nature of the 103 group. Patrice Marshall laid out a very interesting and complete information table of solar facts. Rick Fay helped in answering questions, manning a Sunspotter, and Patrice enumerated the more interesting phenomenon filling her information sheets. Richard Brown and Tom Wideman fine-tuned the Televue 102 refractor on a GM-8 Losmandy mount. The Coronado H-Alpha system filter was quickly brought to bear on the host star. Many normal prominences were displayed and an unusual spike was netted by Rick Fay along the NE limb, and some massive looping prominences were easy targets at the SW limb. The 14mm Pentax eyepiece was a real treat to use on this view. Occasionally the clouds would roll in and Larry Smith would always seem to be at the eyepiece when that occurred. His wise cracks had me in stitches, but even he got a great eyeful as the two hour event came to a close.

The main Starwalk event finally took off at civil twilight, and began with Jeri Turner speaking about the beautiful summer sky. Finding the latitude of Polaris using the hand at arms length and applying it to finding the altitude of brilliant Venus was one highlight. The summer triangle and several other legendary constellations were some of the other topics discussed. A word about the bats had the public watching the skies as they left their seats to join the waiting Starguides at the instruments. The lines were short with each telescope trained to a different stellar or nebular object. The 15" f/4.5 Dobson was aimed at M13 in Hercules. John and Tricia Dewey had comet C/2002 O4 (Hoenig) in full glory at the 20" f/4.5 Obsession. Several other attending amateur astronomers had some very fine equipment set up and doing some astrometric work. The popular Starchair 2000 as always had a line of excited people waiting to take a ride through the cosmos. Rick Fay kept the public happy with his skilled operations of this tool.

As the crowds thinned and went their own way, the clouds made their presence known. As the evening waned, a couple of spectacular meteors blazed across the sky. One started at zenith and moved due east into the clouds, splitting up and washing the grounds with an eerie glow. The second one was a spectacular fireball that crossed from Perseus in the northeast along the east to the south, never gaining more than a 30 degree altitude. It sputtered a bit in the southeast before brightening enormously and going out at the Capricornus/ Sagittarious border. The length of time was a good 6-8 seconds from initial spotting to burnout. There were chills running up and down my spine after that one! Many more meteors were seen as well. Larry Smith and I saw a tumbling flasher satellite just after nautical twilight began coming from the western horizon up and into the zenith. We tracked it for a couple of seconds with the 15" Obsession. Later Larry found M57 in the 18' Obsession he was running. It was one of the best times I have seen it.

The real treat came from the never predictable Dr. Koch's bag of tricks. He presented an I Cubed image intensified eyepiece. The 25mm eyepiece focal length allowed a favorable field of view in most of the fast focal length telescopes. The comet Hoenig was interesting, and M51 was a bright object even prior to dark skies, but the real treat came on M13 in Patrice Marshall's 18" Obsession. There is always some view that stops traffic through the night. This one was it. Very nice.

With some help from Richard Brown and Todd Caldwell, I found NGC 7331 and Stephen's Quintet. I was disappointed in the lack of seeing, as it kept the 15" from resolving all of the galaxies in the quintet. I could make out 2 bright ones and a third faint smudge. I really enjoyed the view of comet Hoenig in Ursa Major and a beautiful star field in Cassiopeia using the 25x150mm giant Fujinon binoculars. The find of the night for me was three dark nebulae in the region around M24. I am not experienced at finding these dark nebulae, and so I was surprised at the stark nature of the view in a large aperture scope. The dust clouds were absolutely gorgeous against the bespeckled background. Unforgettable!

The clouds won the battle at around 1:30 (6:30 UT) so we slowly started packing up the carnival.