Dan, You are right, a Star Party can happen without board supervision. We are talking about Star Parties that the club organizes and invites the public. I would say I have been involved with more informal than formal star parties. SLAS welcomes all members and non-members and by no means tries to regulate where members go. Many want to have group events and mingle with others, we try to accommodate this with new moon events. Erik --- outwest112@yahoo.com wrote: From: daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Natural Bridges Saturday Night Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 13:35:03 -0700 (PDT) This has morphed into a discussion of SLAS and I'm OK with that but I hope people don't get offended when I express my opinion on this. Star parties do not require board member supervision. They really don't even need club affiation. It just requires some one with a telescope set up in a place where some one else can find them. If you go to a National Park and just take your telescope, ask if you can set it up where others can share the view. Star Parties can be spontaneous. This is the spirit of Side Walk Astonomy. It's much better than the turf wars that we go through to try and come up with a schedule. And indeed many people are doing just this. Rob and I met a family at Wolf Creek with an Orion Dob from the Planetarium. They were like others I have met on forest service or BLM land. They have a telescope, are interested in astronomy, they are a joy to be with, and they would never even consider joining SLAS. Maybe we don't get recognition because we don't deserve it. DT _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com