by Gregg Blandin
I just back from a business trip to the Denver area and I decided to head out to their observing site since the directions were posted on their web site. It was Thursday night but I figured maybe if I got lucky someone would be coming out there.
I left the Denver area around 6:30 fighting traffic for the first 40 minutes or so, then things opened up a bit. Most of the area is around 5K, but quite a bit flatter than I thought, particularly to the east where there observing site is. The terrain is very small rolling hills, but otherwise flat. The site was about 90 miles from where I was staying.
As I made the last turn onto a dirt road I realized that this place was out in the middle of nowhere. The last 6 miles were on this dirt road which was in great shape and allowed me to go 50 mph the whole way.
I got to the site which is no more than an open field gently sloping downward from the road with a small building to one end (a "warming hut" as they call it) and a locked gate at the road entrance. No one was there and there were no signs of anything or anybody. I waited patiently for a half hour. No cars came by, no site of anyone. Then, about 20 minutes before dark, I saw a car approaching. I pulled off the road and waited. The car stopped at the site and the guy asked me if I was from DAS (Denver Astronomical Society)
He introduced himself as Brent, a not-to-active DAS club member. He was quite disturbed to find that the gate was locked and he didn't know the combo. We figured there was enough room to set it his 8" schmidt up right in front of the gate if nothing else. Ten minutes later another car arrived (Sandy) another DAS club member who knew the combo which was somebody's favorite NGC object, but is wasn't 7789. She had a Meade 8" dob and was concentrating her efforts to finish the Herschel 400.
After it got dark I'd guess we had a mag 6-6.5 sky with nice clear skies. A 30 degree compact circular shaped light dome from Denver was directly west, followed by a 15 degree and dimmer light dome to the SW (Colorado Springs) and an elongated 20 degree light dome to the S-SE (I think the close by town is called Limon or Lymon or something like that)
There was only one problem, you guessed it, WIND! I helped Brent find about five objects or so in his Schmidt which was very difficult in the driving wind with an equatorially mounted scope I was unfamiliar with and had never used anything like it. Despite the wind, I was fairly impressed with views. Lots of contrast, but shaking all over the place.
Oh well, the people I met were friendly and the site has lots of potential, but I'd like to go back when the conditions are better.