Recap of the 2014 Nightfall Star Party & Imaging Conference

The 2014 Nightfall Star Party & Imaging Conference is a wrap. It was another great success!

The weather was great with the exception of the clouds that rolled in Saturday night and stuck around all day Sunday (but most people were leaving by that time). A small disturbance of clouds rolled through on Friday night also but it only lasted for about an hour then it cleared up nicely.

Daytime temperatures were in the low and mid-90s. Evening temperatures were as cool as 58 but generally closer to 65. Attendance was excellent although the RV park seemed to be at only 70% capacity or so.

Most of the footage at the Palm Canyon Hotel & RV Resort in the video below was taken on Thursday before most attendees had arrived, hence the somewhat vacant appearance in some of the shots.

All of the photos below, except the eclipse image, were taken using a Takahashi FSQ-106ED X-III telescope (106mm aperture quadruplet refractor at f/5, 530mm focal length), a Canon EOS 60Da camera, an Astro-Physics Mach 1 GTO mount, an SBIG ST-i autoguider, and an AstroDon MonsterMOAG off-axis guider. The eclipse image was taken using Alex McConahay's TeleVue 101 telescope with Ha solar filter on top of a Losmandy G-11 mount.