GSSP 2008 - Up and to the Right

Rob Enns

Site and Other Generalities

I arrived at the GSSP location at about 1:00 pm on Wednesday afternoon. I figured I'd be one of the first few arrivals, but was surprised to find the observing field already well populated with tents, RV's, EZ-UP's, and telescopes. It was easy to see early on this was going to be a big star party, the biggest I have ever attended.

There was ample room for camping. I set up in the 3rd row of camping rectangles, in the rectangle closest to the RV area. There were no bad spots to be had at the GSSP site--the horizons are excellent all around, and porta-potties were well distributed along the observing field's edges. I was set up next to Andy and Marco, Carl Ching, Dave Cooper, Scott Baker, Mike Delaney, Eddie with the 4" Nexstar, Steve from Sacramento, Dave from Portland. A highly civilized bunch.

The observing field was, as advertised, heritage grass. Turns out the stuff is pretty sharp! When wearing shorts, the grass poked at my ankes and shins, leaving microscopic perforations in my legs. It was a minor annoyance. Underneath the grass the dirt was dry and very hard. Driving in tent stakes required use of a hatchet or hammer. There were also a few "heritage cow pies" present, but they were so dried out that no aromatic issues arose.

There are two other significant features of the observing site that should be noted. First, dust was omnipresent and any vehicular traffic raised quite a bit of it. It would be nice to see the water truck every couple of hours to try and keep the dust down. Second, it was quite windy in the afternoons, blowing from the West. Staking down one's tent and EZ-UP is a necessity. I saw one canopy collapse with broken poles thanks to the wind. Kite flying was a popular afternoon activity--next year I will bring my kite along to join the fun.

On Thursday evening I made a 360 degree panorama of the GSSP site. It's posted on my site panoramas page. You can see a fellow flying a kite, the main observing field and hospitality tent, and some of the clouds and smoke that bugged us on Thursday night. Here it is:

http://www.westcoastphotons.com/sites.html

Observing

Smoke from forest fires was a constant worry. It seemed to blow down to the Southeast during the day, and would creep back at night. We likely lost a magnitude or two due to the smoke particles in the air.

The site is extremely dark. There were small light domes visible from Bieber and Adin, but I suspect they were exaggerated by the airborne particulates*. Also there were lights visible low on the horizon from surrounding farms, but I did not find them to be a problem.

* I like this word, "particulate". I will try to use it some more in the remainder of this report.

Wednesday night and Thursday night were spent mostly chasing sucker holes. The seeing was very good, but we were catching observations opportunistically between bands of cloud and smoke. Wednesday night was the better of the two. It started out with quite low transparency so I began working on a list of double stars from SAC. After 10:30 pm the skies improved and I got into some deep sky objects until about 1:30 am.

On Thursday I packed it in at 1:00 am after about 1 hour of productive observing. Friday night we had very good conditions all night long. There was clearly some particulate in the air but beyond the slight loss of transparency the observing was great. The sky softened a little after 1:00 am. I turned in at 2:45 am but woke up at about 4:00 am and could still hear some die hards getting the last bit of observing in before dawn took the sky back.

I headed home on Saturday afternoon after looking at the weather forecast ("crap shoot") to spend Sunday with my family. I hope the conditions on Saturday night turned out well for the last night of the event.

My main project for the week was to observe H400 objects. I'd already logged all of the summer H400 objects so I was sneaking in UMa and CVn galaxies before they got too low in the sky. After that I looked at some favorites and some new to me objects from the GSSP general list by Steve Gottlieb. I logged 47 observations during the 3 nights in addition to favorites like B86 that I linger on during the summer.

People in the Neighborhood

The people I met in Adin and Bieber seemed very interested in the star party and happy to have some newcomers in town. We discovered Mexican Coca Cola in the Adin Supply store, and spent a couple lunchtimes there. The biscuits and gravy is very good, with a good deal of meat particulates present in the gravy. The deli sandwiches are great and the meat counter looks fantastic.

I made a trip up to Lava Beds NM on Friday. It's about an hour away and a worthwhile daytime activity for those interested in the geology of the area, crawling about in caves, and local Native American history.

Thanks!

Finally I'd like to thank everybody involved in planning and executing such a terrific star party. Thank you thank you thank you to organizing committee and volunteers, and congratulations on your success this year. I will be back next year with bells on.

Rob