by Paul LeFevre
The first (annual? bi-annual?) California United Star Party, or CalStar, was held at Lake San Antonio in San Luis Obispo County on September 29-30, 2000. Organized mainly by Mark Wagner of TAC (http://www.observers.org) and sponsored by the San Jose Astronomical Association, CalStar is an attempt to bring together astronomy enthusiasts from all over the state to a central location for a few nights of observing, socializing, and fun. In my opinion, it was a wonderful success.
I arrived early for the star party, pulling in to the Lake San Antonio campground at about 4:00 PM Thursday afternoon (Sept. 28th). Coming from San Diego, it was quite a long drive for me (about 6 hours), and if I'm going to go that far, I'm going to get in as much dark-sky time as I can! Albert Highe and Steve Caron (both from the San Francisco Bay Area) were the only ones that had arrived before me, so after a few minutes of socializing I got down to business. Arriving early got me the pick of the choicest campsites -- a spot where my tent could be in shade all day -- and observing spots on the field. As I was setting up my two telescopes, a homebuilt 12.5" f/6 Dobsonian and a 10" LX200, several more observers arrived, making the day-before count about 8. One of the other early arrivals was Jeff Gortatowsky, who had made the long drive up from Orange County.
As twilight set in and stars began to appear in the sky, it quickly became obvious that this site is DARK. I had been to the site once before, about 6 months earlier, but wasn't able to stay the entire night and fully judge the conditions. This time, while there was still a bit of hazy moisture in the air, the transparency seemed very good (4 out of 5), with the seeing being a bit on the soft side (3 out of 5). The LSA site is only at about 1200 feet, so there's still a fair amount of atmosphere to look through -- after being used to the steady, clear skies at 5200 feet on Mount Palomar, this was a distinct change -- however, the site is darker than Palomar, which has light domes from Escondido and Temecula to deal with.
My main focus for the trip was imaging, specifically to work on my "Messier Project" -- a photographic/CCD record of all of the Messier objects (see the updated page at http://www.slip.net/~lefevre/Messier/Messier.htm). Over the three night period, I managed to add 12 more images to my collection, some good and some not so good :) I also took some film astrophotos, which are being developed as you read this. Conditions for imaging were good but not great, and anything close to the horizon was fairly unsteady and it was difficult to get a good image. The night went well, and the seeing improved slightly (to perhaps 3.5 out of 5) as the night wore on and some of the moisture condensed out of the air. The only thing that broke up the night was the small herd of feral pigs that seemed to keep circling Albert Highe's observing location, grunting and snorting as they tried to find something to eat! They weren't aggressive, just persistent :) A huge open field with good horizons, very dark skies, and pleasant temperatures...can it get any better than this?
Of course it can! "Better" because all day Friday and Saturday was spent greeting old friends from the Bay-Area TAC list as they arrived, and meeting new folks as they came in. Friday's arrivals brought the count of observers up to about 50, and by Saturday night there were nearly 100 observers in the field on over 80 telescopes (another person reported counting 76 scopes on Saturday afternoon, but my own count late Saturday night while taking an observing break was 83). The central observing field went from open and spacious to slightly crowded and a bit chaotic; this wasn't due to lack of space (there was plenty), but mainly because it seemed everyone wanted to be close to each other to share views, talk, and socialize -- so the setups got pretty close together!
Friday night's observing was even better than Thursday's. There was less moisture in the air, and the transparency and darkness were just as good. The crescent moon put in a brief appearance before dipping below the Western horizon, and we spent a wonderful night socializing, observing, imaging, and reveling in the beauty above us.
During the day on Saturday, the temperatures rose a bit, hitting around 96 F during the day. Some folks were a bit worried about the covered and uncovered scopes sitting out in the heat, and so pulled scopes off their mounts to sit in the shade. My own scopes fared pretty well, with the only heat effect being the lifting of the contact cement used to hold the formica on my Dob's altitude bearings...a little tape and cooling off, and all was well. Some high, light clouds and smoke from nearby brush fires threatened to ruin the night for us, but Mother Nature cooperated, blowing out most of the smoke and clouds and giving us a night about equal to Thursday.
I went to all the trouble to haul my Dobsonian up to the site as well as the imaging scope, and it did get a pretty good workout. I tracked down some old favorites (M13, M102, M74), spent quite a while gazing at the Double Cluster in Perseus through a borrowed 13mm Nagler eyepiece (what a wonderful huge hunk of glass!), and trying to track down M33 in the scope -- this proved to be a very frustrating experience, as I could SEE the damn thing naked eye, and in the binoculars, but couldn't manage to get the Dob on it! Some old friends suggested that since getting the GOTO LX200 I had forgotten how to star-hop...they're probably right, but I finally managed to put that big beautiful galaxy in the Dob's field, and was rewarded with seeing great spiral arm structure and easily picking off some of the H2 regions in the arms. I also spent quite a bit of time viewing Saturn and Jupiter (and almost blinding myself!), and dropping down to watch old friends rise in the east...the Pleiades, the Hyades, and M42.
I got some good (and not so good) images out of the trip, and I got in some good visual observing. But for me, the best part of the entire trip was the pleasure of spending time with the great folks of Bay-Area TAC, and meeting a whole slew of other California observers. Astronomers in general seem to be a friendlier-than-average bunch, and this group was the cream of the astronomy crop. There were experts in CCD imaging, astrophotographers, outstanding visual observers, planetary nebulae specialists...and a whole bunch of just plain enthusiasts. This star party really did unite observers from all over the state, and I have no doubt it will only grow in popularity as word spreads. Did I mind the six-hour-plus drive? Heck no -- I'd drive twice as far to be out with this group (oh, wait...I've already DONE that!).
Thanks to Mark Wagner, Jim Bartolini, the SJAA, the Park Rangers at LSA, and all the other folks who worked to make this event happen. I can't wait for the next one...