Day 4511

I woke up early this morning and against my better judgement I got dressed and went outside one last time for a look at the pre-dawn sky. Who knows when I'll have a chance to see the milky way again. A couple of other Astronomers Lodge guests were wandering around in the dark doing the same thing. I showed them how to find some of my favorite objects in the pre-dawn May sky. Hey, I'm making progress. A couple of years ago, Astronomy Lodge guests would be showing me how to find things.

When the sky started to lighten, I went inside and fixed myself breakfast. I was still hoping to get an early start on the long journey back to Dallas. A couple of guys invited me to join them at their table. One of the men had been a writer for Texas Monthly for over twenty years. He was freelancing now but was still writing for a wide range of very familiar magazines. I was impressed. The writer's friend was a pilot who had a goal of landing at every small airport in Texas. They had flown to Marfa in the pilot's plane while I was inching along toward the observatory on I-20. We had an enjoyable time trading stories about writing, flying, and living in Texas. So much for my plan to leave early.

Eventually, I hit the road and began my long journey back to Dallas. When I'm driving toward McDonald Observatory, the traffic gradually gets lighter as I head West. When I return to Dallas the opposite happens. The journey starts out as a pleasant drive through the Davis Mountains with surprise views of deer, javelinas, and occasionally even elk around every corner. When you hit the freeway, the wildlife are replaced by eighteen wheelers, and then once you get within a hundred miles of Dallas/Fort Worth the roads become clogged with city traffic. I thought that things would be better on Sunday, but there were still way too many cars for my taste. In the mountains I could drive for ten minutes without seeing a single car. In city traffic I am passed by ten cars in a single minute.

I thought I could avoid the construction in Arlington and the perpetual traffic jam near Fair Park by taking a different route from Fort Worth to Dallas. I didn't save any time and ended up getting lost instead. By the time I discovered that the road wasn't the one I was thinking of, I was well on my way to Shreveport. Oops. I turned around and headed back West again. Jeez. I've lived here for over thirty years and still can't find my way around town.

It took a little longer to get back to the house than I thought it would, but I'm finally home. Dawn not only remembered me, she seemed happy to see me. I haven't bothered to unpack yet. I used the remaining daylight to take a short walk so I could satisfy my Fitbit's desire for a minimum of 10,000 steps.  The walk was such a contrast to my daily walks on Mount Locke. The silence was gone, replaced by police and fire sirens, airplanes on final approach to Love Field, and the perpetual background noises of city life. 

I'm already missing the quiet of Mount Locke. Was the trip worth it? You bet. Would I make the long drive again? The jury is still out on that one. I think I'll go sleep on the idea. It's been a long day and I'm very tired.

Betsy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4510

I could get used to this. I woke up early, so I went outside to watch the Milky Way core rise in the east again. There was also a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus this morning. The two planets were very close together just before sunrise. I also saw quite a few meteors. They were probably leftovers from the Lyrid metoior shower, which peaked just a few days ago. It was very windy just before dawn, but I had a warm coat. I'm starting to recognize constellations easier now. It helps if you actually take the trouble to go outside at night. I wouldn't do this in Dallas, but this definitely isn't Dallas.

Saturday has been the busiest day of my stay. In addition to my regular star party duties, I spent the afternoon at a festival booth explaining different types of telescopes to visitors. There were a variety of different types of telescopes on display and I explained the pros and cons of each. I didn't tell people that I rarely look through a telescope myself. I do know a fair amount about them though. I think my presentation sounded reasonably knowledgable. Maybe someday I'll spend more time looking at the night sky. I kind of doubt it though. There's always the blog to write and I do live in Dallas. 

I had the same telescope tonight at the star party. We looked at the same target too. Messier 3 is quite beautiful. I doubt that I could even see it from Dallas. It is quite faint. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing the Canes Venatici constellation the globular cluster is located in correctly. I do know that it means hunting dog in Latin though. I always learn something new whenever I'm out here. I now know how to open, close, and rotate telescope domes.

It's been a very nice stay out at the observatory. I reconnected with friends, got to enjoy some of the most beautiful dark skies in America, had some delicious meals at the Astronomer's Lodge, and had a chance to remind myself why I became interested in astronomy in the first place. I dread the drive back to Dallas tomorrow just as much as I dreaded the drive out here. It's a necessary evil though. There is no other way to get here. It would be nice if Southwest Airlines flew to Marfa, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. You can take a train to Alpine, but Amtrak is incredibly unreliable. Often the train that goes through Alpine is hours late. It's a lot more expensive than driving as well. 

I'm glad I had time to eat dinner tonight. I was hungry and pretty tired. There was about an hour break between the end of the daytime activities and the start of the star party, so I drove back up the mountain to the Astronomer's Lodge and had my dinner. I don't think I'm going to do any more photography. I've had a good look at both the morning sky and the evening sky. Right now getting some sleep is pretty high on the agenda. It's a long drive back to Dallas tomorrow.

Bea is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day'

Day 4159

I'm back in Dallas. It's been a long and interesting day. The weather wasn't very cooperative Thursday evening. Around sunset there were thunderstorms on the southern horizon and a thick blanket of clouds overhead. We kept checking the forecast, but it didn't look promising. While it was still light outside, our group got a sneak preview of a new telescope prototype from Planewave Instruments. The company wanted to test this scope under McDonald Observatory's famous dark skies. Unfortunitely, the fancy computerized telescope wasn't having any better luck than we were. The only telescope that could penetrate the clouds was a nearby radio telescope that would have made a perfect backdrop for the photos I was planning.

We began to see lightning and as the thunderstorm got closer we retreated to the Astronomer's Lodge to learn more about PixInsight and the intricacies of processing astrophotography images. It was still cloudy around midnight and most of the group decided to call it quits and headed back to their hotels, Airbnb rentals, or campsites for the night. I was the lucky one, since I was already home. I walked to my room, set an alarm for 3 AM and tried to get a few hours sleep. The predawn skies cleared a bit yesterday. Maybe they would do the same thing today.

I dozed off for a few hours and when the alarm on my phone rang, I got up and went outside. It was completely clear. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. I dressed quickly and set my cameras up in in a few choice locations. Since I had the luxury of time this morning, I was more methodical than I was yesterday and tried to take my shots properly. I didn't try to photograph any galaxies or nebula, because I knew I would have difficulty finding them without help from my astronomer friends. The Milky Way was still there though and it looked even more spectacular than it did yesterday.

The picture you see here is straight out of the camera and hasn't been processed yet. I'm standing in front of the Astronomer's Lodge and looking up at the 107 inch Harlan J. Smith Telescope. This should make a nice shot when I have finished processing it. I stayed outside until dawn, photographing the sky from a variety of different angles. It is so beautiful on top of Mount Locke when the sky is clear and the Milky Way is rising. I love this place.

There was no point in going back to bed when the stars began to fade. I fixed a pot of coffee and made myself some breakfast. It is so quiet in the morning at the Astronomer's Lodge. The staff doesn't arrive until later in the morning and I essentially had the place to myself. After breakfast, I packed my bags and got ready for the long drive home. I stopped at the observatory fire station to pump up my tire again since it had lost five pounds of pressure overnight. By 8 AM I was on the road.

As I made the 50 mile drive North through the Davis Mountain to head East on I-10 I didn't see a single car. I almost hit a deer though. The deer are everywhere up here. Luckily, even though my rental car had a bad tire, it had good brakes. No deer were harmed. 

It probably wasn't a great idea to make a 550 mile drive with no sleep, but I made it back to Dallas in one piece. I arrived in town during rush hour but the traffic wasn't as bad as I expected. I don't think anyone works on Friday anymore. It was still a shock to see so many cars though. I really prefer the solitude of the Davis Mountains. I'm sure I'll be back again, even though I hate the drive. The Davis Mountains have become my happy place.

Lady is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 4158

Last night didn't go as planned. The fog lifted during the day and by mid-afternoon the sky was completely clear. Everyone was feeling pretty good when we assembled for a lesson on how to properly align our star trackers and telescopes around 5 PM. We ate dinner around 6 PM and almost immediately afterwards a thick bank of low fog rolled in out of nowhere. The weather reports were still saying that we had clear skies, but maybe fog doesn't show up on weather radar. At any rate there was nothing to see. We drove to the top of Mount Locke to see if we could get above the clouds, but the fog was even worse up there. The fog kept getting thicker and just before midnight we gave up and called it a day.

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.

Haley is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3949

The first day of the astrophotography workshop was a big success. Yesterday's high winds cleared away all the dust and I woke up this morning to beautiful clear skies. I was able to get a take-out breakfast at the Indian Lodge restaurant a few miles down the road and then took a walk along one of the ranch roads before heading for the observatory.

Since I arrived a little early, I learned that I was the last member of the general public to leave the observatory before Covid shut the place down and was also the first person to return. It was good to be back. This afternoon we learned a lot of specialized camera techniques designed to make shooting pictures at night a little easier. I know my way around a camera pretty well, but I learned a lot that I didn't know before. Nobody could answer my questions about how to avoid losing things in the dark. I was very careful tonight, but I did end up losing a small piece of my tripod. I don't know how it fell off, but it's a safe bet that I'll never see it again.

I think I got some nice shots tonight, but nothing is finished yet. A lot of astrophotography is about the processing you do afterwards. To get the best images, you take a lot of pictures of the same thing and then stack them all together. This eliminates the grainy look you see in some night sky photos. We're going to learn how to do this tomorrow.

One thing I learned tonight was that I'm not really made for standing outside for six hours on a cold night. My feet were killing me when we finished our photo session around 1 AM. I definitely showed my age every time I had to kneel down and get back up again. It's hard to set the camera when your hands get really cold as well. I'm not complaining though. It was a memorable evening. The sky was even clearer than it was last March. It's amazing what you can see on a dark night. I saw at least ten meteors tonight, and there wasn't even a meteor shower. If you look carefully, you can often see satellite crossing the sky. I should have brought my binoculars, but I had way too much heavy stuff to carry already.

It's a good thing I was driving slow on the way back to the Prude Ranch after the workshop was over for the night. I almost hit a deer. It was a huge buck with quite a rack on his head. When I was walking this morning, I saw Mountain Lion tracks. There are lots of critters up here. When we were up on the mountain tonight we saw someone shining a searchlight way off in the distance. This was in an area where there weren't any roads, so everyone wondered what was going on. "Some rancher is out hunting wild hogs," we were told.

I'm going to sleep late on Saturday morning. At least I hope I will. I should have written the blog earlier, but then I wouldn't have had anything to say. Daily blogging and astronomy aren't really a great mix, because both happen at night. At least I've finally figured out how to backdate a post so it will appear on the correct day. It may say I posted this late Friday night, but it is really the wee hours of Saturday morning.

If you want to try this sort of thing, get a pair of the most comfortable shoes you can find and dress very warmly. You are going to get cold anyway, but it's worth it. There's something very peaceful about looking up at the night sky. In today's crazy world, I'll take any kind of peaceful I can get. I'm looking forward to doing this again tomorrow night.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3729

I'm starting to feel like I live here. Life has settled into a routine. You don't miss meals at the Astronomer's Lodge. The food is excellent and it's the one time during the day where you can relax and chat with people. Today was Taco Tuesday. Need I say more? This afternoon was my first work day at the 107" telescope. I did three tours today. Usually there are about twenty to thirty people per tour. The tours are interesting and everyone seems to enjoy them. An observatory staff member gives a presentation describing the telescope and demonstrating how it moves. My duties as his assistant are mostly insuring that people don't get into trouble or hurt themselves. I escort visitors to the restrooms and make sure the children don't try to climb dangerous ladders or venture into restricted areas. The observatory can be a very dangerous place with lots of places to fall and buttons that could do a lot of damage if pressed at the wrong time. I make sure that nobody has a heart attack going up the long flight of stairs leading to the telescope on the fifth floor of the building. Since the observatory is at a fairly high altitude, people have passed out climbing these stairs.

Between tours I stay at the observatory until the next tour arrives. It's kind of a weird feeling to be alone in this huge building at the top of a remote mounting. Inside the building you hear the rumble of air conditioning and filtration equipment. Outside all you hear is the wind. It is absolutely silent. You are on your feet a lot during tour duty and at the end of the day all you want to do is soak your feet in some warm water. If I do this again I definitely need to find some more comfortable shoes.

The skies were clear for tonight's star party. It was absolutely beautiful. As the sky grew dark you could see the faint triangular glow of the zodiacal light. This light is caused by sunlight hitting interplanetary dust and is hard to see unless the sky is clear and dark. The Winter Milky Way was clearly visible as well, along with thousands of stars that are never visible in a city like Dallas. I was assigned M-41, the same telescope target I was looking at last night.  This time, thanks to a quick Google search in my room before breakfast,  I knew more about it. I told people that they were looking at something 2300 light years away that was probably discovered by Aristotle. Open star clusters can be quite beautiful. All my telescope visitors seemed to enjoy what they saw tonight.

After the star party was over the staff and volunteers had a meeting about the coronavirus. It may rain tomorrow and when  this happens the star party usually moves indoors and staff members give presentations in the visitor center theater instead. Since Spring Break star parties are large and the theater is small, the observatory decided that it was too risky to pack the theater with people during a coronavirus pandemic. If it rains everything will be canceled. This was probably a wise precaution, but I think the cat is already out of the bag. We've already had close proximity to hundreds of strangers ever since the Spring Break festivities began.

I'm glad my tour guide duties don't start until afternoon. Writing the blog after star parties have concluded and I've had time to drive up the mountain without my lights on keeps me up very late. I set the blog to post just before midnight on Tuesday, but I'm really writing this in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Luckily I can sleep late tomorrow. I'm not going to set an alarm and will just try to sleep as long as I can. The room is certainly dark enough to get a good night's sleep.

Ely is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3528

Sometimes simple things can take forever. I was trying to add some software to my laptop that was already on my desktop computer. I've had the software for a while so it was hard to find the disk image I'd downloaded years ago. When I eventually found this, I discovered I needed the authorization code that came with it as well. Where was that? I still prefer the old days when your software was on a CD. The codes you needed were usually printed right on the box. Downloaded software and more complex licenses are a pain. I finally had to call customer support and sit on hold for quite a while to get the information I needed. Everything works now, but something that should have taken ten minutes ended up taking two hours instead.

I was planning to take some pictures of the Milky Way while we are out in West Texas but it has been so long since I've attempted night sky photos that I'd forgotten the procedure. There's no point to doing this in Dallas. You can't see many stars at night anyway due to light pollution. I see these spectacular night sky pictures on the Internet and wonder how they're done. Basically you need a fast wide angle lens, a tripod, and a fifteen to thirty second exposure using a self timer. I imagine you need a certain amount of luck as well. I'll give it a try and see what happens.

The Sweet Autumn Clematis has started to bloom along the shoreline. I always thought these vines were a wetland weed, but apparently they originated in Japan and escaped into the wild a long time ago. They are more or less a native plant now. At this time of year I see them everywhere near the lake. Hey, something new to photograph. Even the hardy Texas Thistle flowers have gone to seed by now.

The only useful thing I did today was cut apart the big cardboard boxes for the toaster oven and dehumidifier that have been sitting on the back porch for over a week. After the boxes were broken down, I added them to the trash and took the can out to the curb for tomorrow's trash pickup. I don't save boxes anymore after finally realizing how much space they were taking up in the storage warehouse. I used to save boxes in case we moved. I doubt that this is going to happen anymore. Moving is way too much trouble and Texas is a good place to live anyway.

This heat is relentless. It's hard to believe that the observatory told us to bring some light jackets for our visit. I can't imagine wearing a jacket in August in Texas, but apparently the weather is much cooler in the Davis Mountains. The thought of temperatures in the 70's in the evening sounds very appealing right now.

A good night's sleep sounds appealing too. I still wish I was sleeping longer at night. Maybe I shouldn't take so many naps during the day.

Lance is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day