Quite clear, no wind, temperature is minus 12 deg. C, thus not very comfortable for observing! The telescope and Meade LXD500 mount work quite well, however when reversing directions, it takes several seconds before the scope starts moving (this is due to slop in the gears, but it can be fixed). I used the battery pack to power the mount (10 x 1.5V AA batteries) - started at 15.5V but after just one hour the motors quite and the voltage dropped to 7.5V! I suppose the minus 12 temp was the culprit. The above mentioned problem with the secondary coating actually is not noticeable when images are in focus.

I took this opportunity to observe some bright deep sky objects which I've overlooked during the past 20 years - for a total of 5 "new" objects: Cr 70 (Orion's belt stars), Cr 69 (Orion's head stars), Cr 121, Cr 65, and NGC 1980.

I also observed some old "friends" like M44, M48, M36, M37, M38, M65 and M66 (barely detectable), M45, M35, and the Double Cluster in Perseus. I had a great time observing these magnificent objects in a smaller wide field telescope. It brought back memories of when I first started in astronomy 20 years ago with my 4.25-inch Astroscan.

Then I observed Saturn and Jupiter. I was quite pleased with the views of Jupiter - very sharp images, good details on the disk, good colour and contrast. I am very pleased with the 5.1-inch f5 SkyWatcher reflector.

Set up the scope to test the replacement secondary mirror. While setting up the sky clouded over! Managed to see a few stars thru some holes in the clouds and the diffraction pattern is completely circular as it should be. Also happen to catch a shadow transit on Jupiter. There was no wind, temp was plus 3 deg C, no dew, no snow on the ground,, quite pleasant.

Set up both scopes, but the 5-inch was used only for looking at Comet Ikeya-Zhang. The sky was failry transparent but the seeing was bad, it was windy, and the temp was around minus 4 deg. C.

Comet Ikeya-Zhang was found easily in the 6 x 30 finder. It's location was about RA 1hr 25m, DEC +15 43'. The nucleus was quite bright and stellar with a diffuse coma and a short thin tail visible, which I estimated to be about 10 arc-minutes.

I observed a total of 3 "new" objects with the 10-inch: Do 26, NGC 2395, and NGC 2331. I also observed some other previously seen objects like M65, M66, M95, M96, M105 and NGC 3384.

On both nights I saw comet Ikeya-Zhang from my backyard with a pair of 16 x 50 binoculars. The comet is quite low in the west, just above some trees. It's quite bright (about mag. 3.5) with a short thin tail. Both evenings were cold and very windy with a windchill of about minus 15 deg. C.

Arrived on site just before 9 pm, clear and cool but comfortable, no wind, no dew at all! Clear till around 1:30 when clouds started rolling in. Lots of people on site: Tony Ward, Dieter, Stephen Keefer, Steve Bevan, Terry Thomas, Raymond Li, Wayne Wu.

There was a beautiful planetary alignment, so I took several photographs. Here are a couple of photos:

28 mm lens, ISO 800, about 15 seconds. Above the tree is Jupiter. The other four planets are to the right of the tree, see the next photo for details.	45mm lens, ISO 800, about 30 seconds. Forming a triangle in the centre are Mars, Saturn, and Venus. At the bottom right near the tree is Mercury.

Comet Ikeya-Zhang was an easy unaided-eye object, it's large and diffuse, no tail is visible.Through the 10-inch the comet is very large, about one-quarter degree in diameter, very round and diffuse coma, still no tail visible. It's quite a sight! At right is a photo I took: Among some of the usual Messier object I also checked out Markov1, then Tony Ward showed me M13, M81 & M82 through his 14.5-inch dob equipped with the TeleVue bino-viewer - the view was AMAZING! M13 looked three-dimentional. Using both eyes sure makes a huge difference. I observed a total of 10 "new" objects during this observing session: NGC 4470, NGC 4464, NGC 4492, NGC 4488, NGC 4434, NGC 4416, NGC 4469, NGC 4483, NGC 4442, NGC 4417. All are galaxies in Virgo.

Thick haze created a natural solar filter which allowed direct observation
of this minor partial solar eclipse. This photo was taken by a friend using
a standard telephoto lens and film.

Arrived on site around 5 pm on Thursday afternoon (Aug. 8). I stayed on site and "camped" in my mini-van. Set up camp just to the south of the big tent with John Bridgman and Raymond Li.Great weather all week long, but it got progressively warm each day. Woke up Sunday morning to mostly couldy, hazy, hot & humid weather. On Saturday afternoon at 1:30 I gave a presentation in the small tent entitled "From Dusk till Dawn - making the most of Starfest's sky". After 19 years, I still have not won anything at the prize draw!

Set up in the backyard to observe the flyby of asteroid 2002 NY40. Took about one hour to finally find it, probably because my the coordinates I had were not very accurate and because it moved so FAST that I kept missing it by a couple of minutes each time.I finally found it a 23:25 but found it to be quite dim - I estimated it to be about mag. 11. The view could be comparted to seeing an earth-orbiting satellite crossing your telescope's field of view, which means 2002 NY40 was moving pretty fast. I estimated it moved about 1 deg every 10 minutes (= 6 deg per hour, very rough estimate. The calculated speed was 4 deg per hour)

Arrived on site at 20:30, rather warm (17 deg C), no wind, no mosquitoes, no dew, very comfortable observing weather (daytime temp was 30 deg C!!). Several people on site: Mike Cook, Marty ?, John Ruta, Len Benshop, Gil Tenant, and others.

At 21:10 a massive aurora started! For a brief period of time there was a very bright corona overhead with some reds and it reached as far a Sagittarius!! The aurora was so bright it was almost comparable to the full moon, in terms of the amount of light it cast on the landscape! Otherwise the aurora remained quite active in the north-east allowing me to get some good deep sky observing done.The aurora almost stopped around 3 am. I took several photos, but as of January 2003, that roll of film is still in the camera!

I had an excellent observing session and found a total of 14 "new" deep sky objects: NGC 6765, NGC 6675, NGC 6646, NGC 6702, NGC 6792, NGC 6688, UGC 11909, NGC 7223, NGC 7231, NGC 7248, NGC 7250, NGC 7265, NGC 7330, NGC 7426.

One of the highlights of this observing session (besides the great aurora and the excellent deep sky observing) was looking through John Ruta's 25-inch dobsonian telescope! I looked at M33 and M42 - both were amazing, something I've never seen before. There were some really nice HII regions in the spiral arms of M33, which I was later able to see in my 10-inch scope (after learning what to look for!). I left the site at 3:50 am, got home at 4:40 am, and got to bed at 5:00 am! As usual, from the time I quit observing and get into bed, 1.5 hrs pass (about 50 minutes of that is actual driving time, while the rest is taking down the equipment and loading up the van).