Weather and sky conditions:

• • Wednesday, June 17, 2020: clear, somewhat dewey after 1 AM; perfect transparency

  • Thursday, June 18, 2020: clear, perfect transparency

  • Friday, June 19, 2020: mostly cloudy; pockets of clearing to north and northeast

  • Saturday, June 20, 2020: cloudy; some night sky areas opened up

  • Sunday on, several stayed but I left. Not sure what the weather conditions were

  • No sky glow anywhere; could start serious viewing to the south and southeast around 9:30 PM; Polaris visible with finder scope around 8:30 PM for polar alignment

  • Magnitude 15 easily seen with my Meade 14" SCT.

  • Wade challenged me to view IC-1101, the largest known galaxy in the Abell 2029 Group. At Mag 15.1 and 1.2 billion LY away, both Wade and I picked it out! This is my personal best and furthest look-back time ever. Light seen now began its journey well within the Precambrian Era of Geologic Time!

Sean Heneghan adds:  

Wade left on the morning of the 22nd, Roger and I left on the 23rd. The nights of the 21st and 22nd were perfect transparency the whole night, 7.5/10 or so seeing on the 21st and 9/10 seeing on the 22nd. The 22nd was quite possibly the best night I have seen there. I will have one maybe two images to send to you, I again shot M51 as I was not totally happy with last years results and looking at my individual subs its looking very promising. I am seeing lots more detail and more (very) small galaxies around it.

Ryan McDaniel adds:

We had a great time.  We saw some really great views of Jupiter and M15.  Paul showed us lots of obsidian flakes in the area.  On our day trip to Burns, we were interrupted by a cattle drive.

Telescope field on flat grassy surface; Strawberry Mountains to the north; Big Creek USFS Campground to the right (east).

Jonathan Dubay from Portland with his 2x10" binocular telescope. Craftsmanship and optical engineering of his scope was exceptional!

Ryan McDaniel and Erin Culpepper from Portland. Yes, that is their Obsession 20" Dobsonian!

Paul Solomano from Portland standing next to his Obsession 15" Dobsonian. Paul hosted a Friday before viewing gathering around his campfire and shared stories and astronomy tips - and at safe distancing due to COVID. Thanks Paul!

Sean Heneghan - Astro-imager from Issaquah. Celestron 9.25" SCT; SBIG STT-8300 with FW&G filter wheel and AO-8T adaptive optic unit.

Check out his images from our 2019 summary. His 2020 images will be added as received.

Roger Bassett from Astoria, OR with his Celestron C-11. Roger is also an Astro-imager.

John Benham from Spokane, WA. Using a Meade 14" LX200 GPS SCT.  Viewing only, not an astro-imager.

Wade from Portland set up two scopes. He is a serious astro-imager and stay from Saturday 6-13 through Tuesday 6-22. I unfortunately did not take a photo of him or his equipment this year.

As the astro-images come in, I will quickly post them to our web site.

A quick walk north on a gravel road from Big Creek USFS Campground one encounters a beautiful mixed pine and Aspen grove. We are fortunate to be able to use this perfect site for astronomy and being close to nature.

Sean Heneghan's astro-image of Globular Cluster M 13. Discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714 at 22.2 KLY distance and 145 LY diameter. One of the original sub-structures from the beginnings of our Milky way galaxy. I compared Sean's image to several on APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170512.html Detail and resolution of the core stars are just as good as any on APOD. Congratulations  Sean!

Also imaged is the infamous cannibalistic galaxy M51 ( NGC 5194).  Sean will process it into color soon. 27 million LY away; 76,000 LY diameter and 10% mass of our Milky Way Galaxy. Companion galaxy is NGC 5195. Sean also picked out the extremely distant edge-on galaxy off to the lower left - IC 4277 about 240 MLY.