Crater Lake and Oregon Star Party 2006

by Mark Buxbaum

My son and I just returned from a 12-day, 2,000+ mile astrocamping trip. We had excellent dark skies throughout the journey.

Grandview

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Driving across Yosemite from central California, our first stop was the Grandview campground in the White Mountains northeast of Big Pine.

This was my first visit to this legendary astronomy observing spot.

It did not disappoint. Maybe it was because it was our first stop, maybe it was the 8600' altitude, but in any case the sky was superb. I sometimes gauge skies subjectively, looking to see how "pointlike" stars in the Milky Way appear- the lack of any gauzy appearance. Grandview had the most pointlike Milky Way of any place on this trip. I easily found Barnard's Galaxy (NGC 6822), the nearby Little Gem planetary nebula, the Inkspot (B 86), and NGC 6520 in my son's Orion 4.5" SkyQuest dobsonian. Seeing was fair- lots of twinkling stars. Even in August, temps were quite cool- I had to put on half of my warm layers. We were able to find a campsite with good but not great sky views. I think this would be an awesome place for a group campout for astronomy enthusiasts.

The next day we hiked above 10000' in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, on the 4.25 mile Methusaleh walk. Highly recommended.

Tonopah

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The next day we dropped down out of the mountains, and drove across vast empty stretches of sage desert to Tonopah, Nevada. Both Tonopah and Goldfield to its south are true mining towns. They display more grit than pretty tourist facades.

I made the 66 mile round trip east to the Monte Cristo Range for a star party hosted by the Tonopah Astronomical Society. Unfortunately their new star party location was unmarked off the main highway, and I couldn't find the turnoff for the location in the dark. So it was back to the motel room to watch TV.

Austin and the Bob Scott Campground

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Driving north through central Nevada from Tonopah, we did a scenic tour through the Toyaibe Range. The dirt road over Kingston Summit was very scenic, with numerous creek crossings.

We passed one section filled with thousands of 3"-4" long black crickets. I noticed the living ones were feasting on the dead squished ones, so my son dubbed the swarm, "Giant Mutant Cannabilistic Crickets of Doom".

Kingston Summit, at 8680', like Hinkey Summit at 8554' near the Oregon border, was high, cold, windswept, and semi-alpine. There was no shade for a morning tent, nor protection from wind while observing.

Continuing past Kingston and the "Kingston International Airport", we had a late lunch in the lovely tourist town of Austin. We did some serious four-wheeling southeast of town, looking for a good observing/camping site. ("I'm crazy." I kept telling my son as we traversed steep slopes in 4WD).

Ultimately we stayed at the Bob Scott Campground east of Austin. There were only a few people there, so I picked a fine campsite with excellent southern and eastern views. We spent time waiting for our dinner chatting with an older gentlemen there, and we enjoyed his remininisces of his younger days- the mischief he got into during the World War Two years.

Crickets chirped merrily through the night. (Why are crickets at one high altitude location and not another? Any entomologists out there?)

Traffic on US Highway 50, the "Loneliest Road in America", fell off markedly after midnight.

In my 12.5" dobsonian I saw the globular clusters NGC 6539, NGC 6517, and IC 1276. The Magnificent Cluster (NGC 7789) was superb at 90x. M33 was a "clearly flattened reverse-S, with a single, jutting extra spiral arm". M31 in the 70mm binos was near photographic. Highly recommended.

Travelling north from Austin up 305, a spur road off of the "Loneliest Road in America", was probably the most empty stretch of road in the whole trip. At 70mph it would be 15 minutes before we saw another vehicle passing in the other direction. (This is not as lonely as outback South Australia though- which was the only place I got a little nervous).

Trying to find a place to camp for the night, we almost camped in the ominously-named Lye Creek campground, where the only other person there was an unfriendly, shirtless, tatooed guy in a Nevada Dept of Transportation truck. I got a weird vibe from him, and remembering Cary Stayner we hightailed it out of there.

The sun was setting with us having no place to stay, so we hammered on through the night. Lights like a desert oasis shimmering in the night beckoned us on to the border town of McDermott, where we thankfully booked a cheap motel room and crashed for the night.

Oregon and Snow Mountain Lookout

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As we had a day before the Oregon Star Party began, I went into a "hook and bullet store" in the friendly agricultural town of Burns Oregon to purchase a topo map of the area. Several elk bow hunters in the place were very helpful, with one saying a friend of his has often spoken about the Oregon Star Party. I bought an excellent Benchmark map, and after confirming the site with Oregon BLM, we headed off to their recommendation, Snow Mountain Lookout. There are many lookouts in this portion of east central Oregon. We camped and observed below the summit at around 6800'.

There was a hunter's meat drying scaffolding next to our tent, which my son looked askance at, muttering things about "Bigfoot"... :)

The Saturn Nebula was a fuzzy football at 60x in my son's 4.5" dobsonian.

Later that night I hiked towards the summit with my 10.5x70mm binos, and was rewarded with a FULL 90 DEGREE view of the celestial sphere. I realized we hardly ever see a view with NO TREES OR OBSTRUCTIONS of the horizon. The lookout tower itself must have FULL 180 DEGREE views of the sky, which must be incredible (but cold as heck). Recommended.

Oregon Star Party and Truss-Tube Dobs 101

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This was my first time at OSP, and only my second large star party after one Shingletown attendance. I was very favorably impressed: everyone we met was friendly, we got an informative booklet, the vendor choice and food was good. I was especially impressed at how serious the observing was- fewer lightweights- many people stayed up til 4am with me, and used no lights at all in the night. A large number of people had only been in the hobby a few years ("I don't believe in optical finders, I just use a RDF." (?)). People also made an effort to be quiet in the morning. I did follow prior recommendations to use earplugs while sleeping in the tent though.

The OSP site is a very large undulating field, strewn with rocks of an average size of 3" or so. It's like observing on Mars. Sky conditions at around 5000' were not as good as my prior mountain locations, although the seeing was comparatively excellent. I had my best view ever of the Veil Nebula, seeing many small pieces I'd never seen before, even from Glacier Point in Yosemite. With my night-myopia-optimized "astro-specs", I could see M33 naked eye no problem.

Fine views included Jupiter and Antares' companion at twilight through a homemade, 20", ZO-mirror-equipped dobsonian.

As I am looking to upgrade from my fine 12.5" sonotube dob, for more aperture, less weight, and especially DSC support, I attended the "scope walk", examining various interesting new designs. Dan Gray's "string scopes" were the most interesting. I also spent a great deal of time "pumping" any big dob owners I found for information. Every single person I spoke with was helpful. There were a surprising number of home-built scopes there- I think people are less affluent than in the Bay Area.

From what I learned, I gather the primary difference between Obsession and Starmaster scopes are the pole placement (outside the mirror box versus inside), the truss attachment mechanism, and the mirror support. No Obsession owner I spoke with had either kicked the "guts" and wires on the outside of the scope, nor noticed any astigmatism from the sling mirror support.

I guess the mechanics of the truss system- the number of poles, their method of attachment, and their overall rigidity, form the important skeletal structure of a truss tube dob (with the primary mirror being the heart).

I spent a while talking with a friendly guy from Seattle about his just-delivered very fast Plettstone 18" f/4.2 scope. It had the Argo Navis DTC and the Servocat system, both of which I want. Prior to seeing this scope, I thought a 16" aperture would be the largest aperture that would allow me, at 5'9", to view at the zenith one step up a stepstool. But this 18" f/4.2 scope (Paracorr required) was the same height! (I wonder what is the effective aperture-diminishment of the Paracorr?)

I looked for him in the night, scanning for the very light-colored wood and silver poles of the Plettstone, but couldn't find him in the large, scattered field.

Klamath, Crater Lake, and Lassen

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Our trip southward included seeing bald eagles and more nature in the beautiful Fort Klamath area, and enjoying the fantastic scenery at Crater Lake NP.

I had a last, fine observing night at a mountain site in the Lassen area. Everything was set up for a "perfect" observing night- I was well-rested, the truck was positioned to block the slight breeze, my scope, table and observing chair were all snuggled against the truck.

LDN 108 appeared as a "small, dark comet". The Smythe double star 15 Aql was "yellow-white and yellow-orange". I spotted a long elusive target, the Cocoon Nebula (IC 5146), which was "faint, seems to envelope a small group of stars". I saw "6 spiral arms?" in one of my favorite galaxies, NGC 6946. NGC 7793 was a "very nice bright small galaxy in Sculptor".

When the breeze died around 2am, my "perfect night" was dashed by the buzz of large, persistent mosquitos. I learned something interesting about mosquitos- whenever I turned on my red LED flashlight, I effectively illuminated myself, as if with an infrared mosquito homing beacon! So after 2am I was forced to go "chartless" and observe from memory. I spent a long time examining details in the core of NGC 253.

How many PERFECT astronomy nights have people experienced, where ALL factors are go?

The next day as we drove out I noticed a gigantic housing development being built directly under our observing site. While I am writing a note to the national forest ranger, requesting the developer to use only fully-shielded light fixtures, I am doubtful it will have a strong impact. But, I WILL do every little thing I can to help. Hey, if McDonalds can be forced to change its McSlurry lids so poor hedgehogs won't starve, perhaps the combined voice of lots of "little people" CAN make a difference!

Happy Skies,
Mark