Truly an exceptional event! We had about the same number of guests as last year… 300 – 400 guests, which is excellent as last year we had a bit of TV coverage, this year Ian really helped with his interview in QC AM tho, the rest was Facebookand our web site. But again, as far as counts, I’ll get a better idea later… but I’d say pushing the 400 mark…

Skies were great, Ian was able to get Bettendorf to shut off the lights at the complex too! … a surprise to all was that we could actually see the Milky Way  from the schools location… very cool!

Not alot of meteor’s,  I saw about 4 between signing in folks, selling raffle tickets, talking about the presentations and events… I’m sure that there were many more, but as I was kept busy, I know guests were kept busy looking through the many scopes and EAA rigs set up as well as watching the presentations. We all know that to see alot of meteors, ya kinda have to be watchin’ for them… no biggie… lots to do and all had a great time!

With the many sizes and types of scopes available for guests to check out, Saturn and Jupiter, as always, were great hits… I heard talk from guests about also seeing double stars, star clusters and nebulae…. ofcourse there were quite a few satellites and another great hit was a very nice bright guest… the ISS… quite a few oohs and ahhs…

After seeing the double stars, a few guests talked to me about them, so I replaced the Moon presentation that repeated a number of times with the Binary Star Systems presentation,  and let that repeat for a while. On the second projector, I left a presentation on Meteor Showers run all night. This presentation also had a segment featuring the Persiods…

We did the raffle for the Celestron Moon Scope at 10:30 PM and the winner, the Ripple family was quite pleased to pick up their prize. I invited them to visit one of our online sites to check out meeting times and events and if they needed help with their new scope.

I also met an elderly couple who were very close friends with Wayne Jens… he asked about the club and may be stopping in on our meetings in the near future.

We ended the event shortly after midnight and left by about 1 AM….

As pictures become available, we’ll do some posting.

Club members that brought gear:

Ian S
Sam S
Paul S
Robert M
Byron D 
Matt N
Craig C
John B
Jeff S

Support:
Cecil W
Rolando G
Steve V

A special thanx to the handful of PV students that helped out throughout the event!

Clear Skies!
Jeff