September is my favorite month of the year for observing. The nights are reasonably long but not too cold. And there are no mosquitoes to speak of. Under new moon conditions, the entire night sky is available for perusal -- everything from Sagittarius and its summer sky environs in the evening to Orion and its winter sky environs in the morning. And at this time of the year, the morning zodiacal light starts to come into its own. Such was the setting for FarmFest VII, held on the new moon weekend of September 6th, 7th, and 8th at the "Old MacDonald Farm"

Things got rolling on Friday afternoon with the arrival of the first participants. By the end of astronomical twilight approximately 15 people were present from Oshawa, Toronto, Trenton, and Belleville. After a brief tour of the site (known as "LCOS", or the Lost Channel Observing Site) the observing commenced in earnest. Though some clouds floated by from time to time, the sky was otherwise clear. M13, 27, 56, and 57 were a few of the objects enjoyed with the 17.5" Dobsonian. Once again Steve Chomniak brought his 13.1" Dobsonian and (more importantly!) his set of TeleVue eyepieces. Several of us observed until dawn and were treated to a preview of the winter sky. With twilight growing in the east, Orion was most of the way to the meridian, and even Sirius was well up! This, I thought, was a strange sight since all the trees were in leaf and the grass was still green!

Saturday was cloudy all day, which put a stop to the planned solar observing. By late afternoon it looked like it would be cloudy for the rest of the weekend. When complaints about the cloudy sky conditions surfaced, I reminded the participants that FarmFest only guaranteed dark skies, not clear skies! Fortunately, the skies cleared at sunset and stayed clear for about 3 hours. An even bigger contingent from the Belleville astronomy group showed up this night, as did Leo Enright and Denise Sabatini. 20 people were now in attendance. Once again the official tour was given and the 17.5" brought to bear on a number of deep sky objects.

After the clouds rolled in, several visitors left and the rest of us waited for the clouds to go away. Doug Clapp had been experimenting with his SBIG ST4 CCD and laptop computer in his observatory before the clouds came in. Now with lots of time available, he gave several demonstrations of his setup, including a fantastic image of M57 taken that evening. After a couple hours of waiting, everyone decided that it wasn't going to clear before dawn and so we all retired for the night. Leo and Denise arose at dawn to observe the planets during morning twilight. The rest of us, unfortunately, were still lying down on the job!

By Sunday night, just a few of us were left, although a couple more Kingston Centre members showed up about sunset. Sunday night proved to be the clearest night of the weekend: no clouds at all! The highlight of this night for me was my first look ever at SS Cygni -- and it was in outburst! As on Friday night, we observed until dawn. It was a wonderful way to conclude FarmFest.

The turnout for FarmFest was quite strong this year. 11 participants stayed for the whole weekend and 7 stayed until Monday morning just to squeeze in a third night of observing. The turnout, combined with the mostly cooperative weather made FarmFest VII the most successful ever.