Day 3950

I was a little better organized today. Instead of lugging all my heavy gear all over the mountain, I left most of it in the car and just walked back to the car when I needed to change lenses. I figured out how to program the Prude Ranch into the GPS, so it was easy to find my way home tonight. We learned a lot at the afternoon workshop sessions. I think I understand the principals of stacking now and took long sequences of picctures to assemble later when I get back to Dallas. We went to new locations tonight. The stars were the same, but the surrounding were different. It's still a little hard for me to find my way around in the dark without a flashlight. I almost fell in a hole, but I survived the evening without a mishap. I didn't drop or lose any equipment tonight. Like I said, I was better prepared.

It's weird being up on the mountain at night. It's so quiet that you can hear a human voice from five miles away. At some point during the evening the coyotes began to howl. One coyote would howl and then other would answer from all over the place. There were dozens of them. We were surrounded by coyotes. The astronomers why live ion the mountain seem used to the wildlife. Everyone has had an encounter with rattlesnakes and one of the workshop leaders said he opened his back door one evening and a bunch of Javelinas tried to come inside.

One of the hardest things about astrophotography is trying to keep your camera focused in the dark. Autofocus doesn't work on stars and sometimes lenses focus past infinity. It's easy to bump things in the dark and there is no reliable way to check your focus until after your exposure is taken. You hate to take a sequence of twenty pictures and then discover that your focus was off a bit. Stars are supposed to be crisp little points of light. Even a tiny mistake will make them go soft. I had plenty of perfect exposures, but as you might expect, I had my share of failures as well.

I went back to Indian Lodge for breakfast this morning. This time, instead of taking my meal back to the ranch, I walked over to a little picnic table overlooking a small canyon and ate my breakfast outside. It was a beautiful morning and a bit warmer than yesterday. The Davis Mountains State Park is a bird sanctuary and it was peaceful to listen to all the birds sing while I ate. It's amazingly quiet up here I like that.

It's kind of sad that there are no real plans to reopen the observatory to the public. They've started having star parties again, but nobody can look through telescopes anymore. Attendance is really restricted as well. My astronomer friend opened up one of the domes for us tonight so we could photograph a telescope looking out at the sky through an open dome. Everyone wanted to look through the telescope, but that was off limits. I have a feeling that it's going to be a long, long time before I get to look through the eyepiece of one of the large telescopes again.

We all had an opportunity to stay for a third day and do some more photography Sunday night. I've already photographed everything I can think of though, and I'm very tired. I've really enjoyed my stay, but two nights on the mountain is enough. I'm always the oldest person at these type of events. My age is starting to show, but I'm still hanging in there. I'll make the long drive back to Dallas tomorrow. At least the traffic will be a lot better on Sunday. There are still a lot of people on the road though. Now that nobody is flying, they're all taking road trips instead. The Indian Lodge is completely booked through December. 

There may be another workshop out at the observatory later in 2021. I'll probably go to that one as well if it ever happens. I don't even care what the topic is. There's something special about The Davis Mountains. I just like being out here.

Diva is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day