I returned to the Astronomer's Lodge and went to bed. About 4 AM I woke up to go to the bathroom. Since I was up, I decided to go outside and see if the skies had cleared. There were still clouds, but there were patches of clear sky. This looked promising. I quickly got dressed and grabbed a camera and tripod. Whenever I saw a patch of clear sky I took a series of photos. Sometimes a clear patch would last about thirty seconds. Other times the sky was clear for five or ten minutes. As it turned out, 4 AM was the perfect time to see the core of the Milky Way. For a while I was able to see the entire arch of the Milky Way as it crossed the sky. The photos I took weren't as as spectacular as the ones I took last October, but I felt good that the evening wasn't a total disaster.
My little window of opportunity didn't last long. After I felt comfortable that I had captured something, I returned to the Astronomer's Lodge to change camera lenses. I was only inside a few minutes, but when I returned to my tripod, there were no stars. The fog had become very thick again. I went back to sleep and when I woke up this morning, the mountain was still shrouded in a thick fog. The humidity has been very high for the past few days. This is very rare for West Texas. The humidity was 90% this morning which is almost unheard of at the observatory.
I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, but I don't really feel tired. I ate breakfast and then circled the mountain again like I did yesterday. It was interesting to watch the fog slowly lift as I walked. Each time I completed a loop around the mountain I could see a little more of the terrain below. It was actually quite beautiful to watch the fog lift and the sky gradually become blue.
So far, today looks like an exact repeat of yesterday's weather. The skies are completely clear now and it's easy to feel optimistic about observing conditions tonight. Things can change quickly in the mountains though as we learned last night. If it's clear tonight, we'll probably skip some of the planned classroom time and try to catch up on the observing we missed yesterday. At least I know how to use my star tracker now. If I can see Polaris tonight I"m going to set the thing up and try to step up my game a bit. I feel more confident now. All we need are some clear skies.
I had a bit of a scare yesterday. When I was driving to the top of Mount Locke after dinner, a warning light came on saying that my left front tire was very low and ended to be filled immediately. Not good. I was miles away from a gas station that was probably closed anyway. I had visions of waking up in the morning with a flat tire and no spare. Luckily one of my astronomer friends came to the rescue. He said that the observatory fire station had an air compressor where I could fill the tire 24-hours a day. So far, so good. I'm going to check all the tires again before I return to Dallas. I don't think anyone even bothers to maintain rent cars anymore. They just fill them with gas and send them out on the road again. The last time I rented a car, a warning light came on saying that I was low on oil. This time one of my tires had only half the air pressure of the other three tires. After all you pay for rent cars these days, you'd think they could do better.
I'm really hoping that we get some better weather tonight. It's going to be a long time before I get to see dark skies like this again. Clouds are easy to see in Dallas. I was looking forward to seeing stars.
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