Hawaiian Paradise Park
Stargazing Guide.

"Clouds to the east, creeping over the mountains at twilight, but retreated as night progressed. Glowing lava light produces sky glow to northeast, variable possibly because of clouds, haze, or variations in lava flow. Only source of skyglow visible, no light domes. 3 or 4 light trespass lights visible 10-15 miles to west, apparently on the coast, one may have been a boat, read beacon pulsating, brightest light trespass not brighter than 1st magnitude star. Seeing fair-poor early, settling down to fair later. High frequency twinkling in stars, indicating upper atmosphere wind shear. Transparency variable depending on smoke plume from crater, good overall, occasionally fair, ZLM 7.2 Draco. Center of Milky Way galaxy as it climbs above the horizon becomes brightest natural source. The landscape is dark, mostly lava, low albedo, hard to get around by starlight as a result, white truck reflects it, features in the land difficult to discern. In the Milky Way, the pipe nebula and prancing horse are easy, the fingers of Ophiuchus are not seen. Based on light pollution Class 1, but features seen in the sky don’t compare to other locations where seeing and transparency better. Moisture in the air, volcano plume, poor seeing degrade visual observations."

"After fog cleated the transparency continued to improve throught the ngiht and was best during set 5 and 6. Kilauea crater was smoking and the light from the crater was easily visible, although constantly changing. Very little anthropogenic light visible anywhere. Excellent conditions overall, no clouds, good transparency and good seeing. Milky Way bright and detialied. Dust lanes have fine detial, sagittarius and scutum star clouds bright."