Analysis of fixed target collisions with the STAR detector

Collisions between gold ions in the RHIC beam with aluminum nuclei in the beam pipe provide an unexpected opportunity for analysis of fixed target collisions with the STAR detector at RHIC. Lower energy fixed target collisions extend the low energy reach of the RHIC beam energy scan and possibly improve the chance of finding the critical point of the hadronic to quark matter phase boundary. In this talk, we will present preliminary pion yields from Au+Al collisions at 8.85 AGeV and $\sqrt{s}$ of 4.5 GeV. Comparisons will be made to results from the AGS heavy ion program as well as UrQMD simulations.