Thunderbird Public Star Party
2005

A few Comments on the evening:

Great star party!

The best I have been to.

It was actually crowded (over 20 telescopes and close to 1,000
people) and there's alot of area there. The night was perfect and
everyone seemed to have a great time. Next time I will make a sign
for my 8" Meade and spell out Schmidt-Cassegrain for all those poor
folks taking notes in the dark.

I guess it was so large a group we didn't even meet up with each other at all!
The peak of the crowd was about 8:30 and the crush was more than a half-hour before and after. Taking 20 scopes times 20+ deep average all scopes at < one minute per look for an hour gives 1200+, add the early- and late-birds, subtract the repeaters, guess about 800-1000 in attendance.

We were also witness to a nice Iridium flare in the darkening twilight sky at 7:22:45 that was about mag -5 or -6 at 68 degrees high in the SE. We got about 200 people to all look in one direction in the sky for a couple minutes prior. Once we got some people looking then all the rest started looking too and wondering why they were looking. Then when they all saw it flare up they were astonished and all saying what was that?! How did you know that???

It was the largest group I've ever been in to see a flare.

Thank your lucky stars, if it didn't show there would have would have been AWWWWs instead of OOOOHs.