Attended the Table Mountain Star Party from 8/3/05 to 8/6/05 and had a very good time. The star party (a gathering of amateur astronomers, usually in a dark sky location) is one of the most popular in the Pacific Northwest and has an attendance of 700+ people. The first (Wednesday) and third (Friday) nights were the best nights with the third night the best imaging session I've had in a long time!
Wednesday and Thursday were both impaired by smoke from nearby forest fires. Even the fires had an upside though, the party attendees got to see classic World War II bombers doing fire-bombing duty!
The star party was once again blessed with a wealth of excellent speakers, with Stephen James O'Meara's talk on visual observing the highlight for me. Among Steve's noteworthy accomplishments was the first visual sighting of Halley's comet on its return to the inner solar system. Steve was also one of the first astronomers to see the "spoke" structures in the rings of Saturn.
One of the problems with the TMSP are the vendor booths -- at least it's a problem for my wallet ;-) I bought several books, a Meade Deep Sky Imager (DSI) Pro camera, and lastly a 10" dobsonian reflector! I was getting bored while the computer was doing astro-imaging so I needed a visual 'scope to keep me entertained :-)
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