About 40 HAA members and members of the public came to Binbrook Conservation Area, were greeted by members at the gate and directed to the pavilion area where we had set up about 6 scopes and plenty of lawn chairs. John gave a very fine presentation on meteors and what to expect in the night sky, also involving some of the audience members in demonstrations of star and planetary orbits. It was an excellent 20 minute talk as the skies darkened and the real show in the sky began.

The moon was up and fogged the sky sufficiently to prevent seeing some of the stars in the little dipper and presumably also washed out some of the dimmer meteors. As Mike mentioned, the meteors are very quick, coming and going within a second. I saw about 10 fireballs over the course of the evening but missed a few beauties that garnered exclamations from some of the crowd members lucky enough to be looking their way.

I set up the GWS in hopes of being able to find Boattini 2008 but it was way too faint to be seen when the moon is up, and the moon did not set until after 1 AM. However the GWS did come in handy for examining a few well-known double stars, Jupiter, the Moon and M13, which looked fine.

I was able to point another members scope at M13. It had a finderscope but the field of view was too small for me to orient on the sky. I groped my way to Alcor and Mizar, then put my laser against the scope tube, adjusting it to point in the direction of Alcor and Mizar. Then i swung the whole scope, laser and all, to M13 and ended up on target.

I served my assigned time at the gate, greeting and dismissing visitors, and then returned to the main crowd in time to help with some of the take-down. After waiting for a couple more fireballs to round out the evening, and providing a feast to a plethora of hungry mosquitoes, i packed up the GWS and left at about 1:30 AM.