Telescope Reviews: (CA) Golden State Star Party

My family and I made the trek down to GSSP from the Seattle area. The star party was a great success.

We went as far as central Oregon on Friday night so that we could stop for the night and plan to reach Adin about 10:00am on Saturday.

The weather was great on the way down, but clouds started moving in on Saturday afternoon. We watched the system build and could see heavy rain and lightning to the southeast. It was pretty clear at that point that there would not be a much observing on Saturday night.

We were thinking that we were glad to not be "over there," but it turned out to be a bit premature. Just as my wife and I left the motorhome to take a walk around the site, it started to sprinkle - this was probably around 7:00pm. After a short time, the sprinkle turned into rain. The rain turned into a torrent. The torrent turned into hail. There was nearby lightning and thunder. The storm eventually passed, but it rained on and off for the rest of the night.

My family and I are seasoned star party veterans and don't mind the weather. We stay dry in the motorhome and have sufficient covers to make the rest of our site pretty weather proof on short notice.

When we got up on Sunday, we expected to find the site to be muddy, but it turned out that the ground just soaked up the water and it was pretty dry. It remained cloudy most of the day. Around 7:00pm, it cleared off and we had a decent - but cold - night of observing. The temperature sensor on my focuser reported 5C, but I heard reports down to 34F and 31F from a few other folks (34F might have been possible, but I did not see any frost on Monday morning, so I'm skeptical of the latter.) At any rate, it was cold enough that I cut my observing short at about 1:30am to turn in and left my imager running for the rest of the night on M51.

Monday night was a bit warmer and both I and my neighbor (also from the Seattle area) stayed up until dawn observing. Some time during the night, when everyone around us had gone to bed, we wandered the star party towards voices in the night. Eventually, we ended up with a pretty festive group near a bunch of dobsonians (I think that some of the star party organizers were among them, but it was dark, so I don't know who they actually were.) After looking at a few objects with them, someone had the idea that we should observe Pluto, since it's favorably positioned and about to get lost in the crowded star clouds of the Milky Way. There was much speculation of star fields and moving back and forth between computer screen and eyepiece. Ultimately, we did not feel like we'd really identified it.

Tuesday night was another all-nighter. On each of the nights, I try to balance my activities between imaging at least one object, and then observing once the imaging run is set up and running. After the previous night's search for Pluto, I felt that I should have another go at it. So I pointed the C14 at Pluto and looked at the star field. I then compared the star field to what The Sky showed on my laptop. I wasn't really convinced that I was looking in the right place, so I located a bright (mag 6) star near Pluto in The Sky and then pointed the telescope there.

Once I had confirmed the bright star, I defined a field of view indicator in The Sky to match exactly what I was seeing with my C14 and 31 Nagler. From there, I star hopped to the field that contains Pluto. My neighbor and I are pretty confident that we hit it because we had an exact match between the eyepiece and computer screen.

With Pluto logged, I then caught Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune (I'd already observed Saturn before it set earlier in the evening.) Just before dawn, I caught Venus and Mars. I would have tried for Mercury, but it looked like the dawn light would overwhelm it before it rose. I don't normally do much planetary observing, so this was a really fun night.

Overall, I think that the star party was a great success. I am perfectly happy to get 3 out of 4 clear nights. All of the folks that we met at the star party, the ranch that hosted it, and the town of Adin were just great. I've got some imaging data for M51, M20, M90, M104 and M17 that will need to be processed when I get a chance. Our neighbors on the other side (not from the Seattle area) were ATMs and had a 12.5" and 22" dob that they'd built themselves - including the mirrors. They shared the views with my family and me. It's a treat to look through a big scope that's been built and tuned by its owner. The visual view of M51 was about the best I've ever seen - nearly photographic.

Oh well, it looks like I've rambled for a while. We are definitely looking forward to GSSP next year, if the schedule works out for us.

-Wade