Calstar 2008 Experience Report

Dan Wright

It's nice when people are "creatures of habit" and camp in the same general place; you can walk around in the dark and guess who's where based on tradition. It's as though we pressed "Pause" on the party and let a whole year slide by, then pressed "Play" and picked up right where we left off. There's Rashad! It's him in person, and I'm walking up and saying "hi" and there's his tidy observing set-up including ground tarp, and his big smile and hearty laugh, and it's like deja-vu and Calstar 2006 continued.

Several noteworthy beloved friends and astronomers weren't with us at Calstar 2008, and they were missed! These include Bill Cone, Bob Czerwinski, Eileen Chun, Elisabeth Oppenheimer, Evan Garber, Heather Steingruebl, Jane Smith, Michelle Stone, Paul LeFevre, Randy Muller, Rich Neuschaefer, Robert Shelton, Sarah Jones, Steve Gottlieb, and others too. Hey! You missing persons! When will we see you again?

If I could, I would invite everybody to breakfast, but I must keep this on a manageable scale, so I put spectacles on my nose like Santa Claus and painstakingly create an invitation-list, feeling awful about people who get left out. The list gets longer all the time, and now I've got 51 names on it. It's a good thing all 51 don't suddenly show up at the same time for breakfast every morning!

I listed wasps on the menu because I predicted we'd have a few, but I didn't realize how bad it would "bee". Almost nobody could eat at the table because gangs of wasps would bedevil anyone sitting with food. I advised people to grab a breakfast plate then walk away in order to eat. I remember friends carrying plates marching in wide circles around my camp, staying in constant motion to escape wasps.

Half our daytime at Calstar was spent talking about the wasps and planning their demise. Carl "meat bees" Larson taught me not to be afraid – I watched him wade unconcerned into buzzing swarms of them in order to cook or serve food, or to wash dishes, or re-position wasp traps. Rob Hawley and Shane Raney drove into Paso Robles to purchase traps, and by the end of Calstar we had trapped perhaps 400 wasps without noticeably denting their population. Jamie Dillon and Mike Delaney set examples of patience and courage around them. I became fearless myself -- I would stride up to a wastebasket with perhaps 50 wasps foraging frantically inside, then without flinching I'd smash down and compact the garbage, ignoring the sudden angry booming of their wings, and cinch up the sack and carry it off to the dumpster with the little beasts following and darting at my ears.

We identified them as Vespula vulgaris, the Common Wasp, a.k.a. yellow jackets. Their sting is less serious than that of a honeybee. The stinger isn't barbed and doesn't detach from the bee and work its way into the wound (but on the other hand, wasps can stab multiple times like a sewing machine). Honeybee stings evolved to deter mammals from raiding honey, whereas wasp stings are mostly for fighting other insects. Honeybee venom is a complex mix of toxins, whereas wasp venom is comparatively simple (by what I've read).

You can wave Vespula vulgaris away and even bat them around and they won't get pissed; they seem to sting only when trapped and pinched. I got stung on the bottom of a toe -- I was wearing sandals and I guess one crawled under, then I stepped on it. The sting hurt at first but faded after an hour, and was gone after 8 hours. Mike Delaney got stung on the web of skin between two fingers while performing kitchen clean-up, probably when a wasp crawling on his hand got pinched briefly between his fingers. Delaney received a second sting also while volunteering in the kitchen –- he earns high honors and a combat medal for bravery.

Carl Larson and James Turley each ate a wasp and got stung inside the mouth. Carl was noticeably perturbed, and said it hurt like hell. But he handled it, then afterword he made no further mention of it, which certainly reflects his manliness and fortitude. But I'm guessing that his Vespula sting, like mine, just kind of got better after awhile.

At Calstar 2008 every night was dark and clear. First the seeing was OK, then the seeing got better, then even better and in the end it was great. This describes the trend each night, and also the trend across the four nights. There was very little breeze and no dew. Each night began as a beautiful summer evening with a grand sunset. It was shirtsleeve observing until about 11, then just one-jacket-no-hat until 1 AM, then merely hat-plus-two-layers the rest of the night, never requiring parkas or boots. I stayed up until 3 AM the first night, 4 AM the second, 4 AM the third, and 3 AM the final night.

As soon as astro-dark had settled around us, if you looked out, and listened out, across the field you could tell the night sky was getting WORKED. I mean there was no idle chatter, and instead, slewing scopes and red lights in motion and the sound of eyepieces being inserted into focuser tubes, and exclamations of triumph and discovery. Our Calstar field was covered with bustling observers.

For years I had fiddled with inadequate goto accuracy on my 10" LX200, but this time on my laptop I carried the image of a new Meade OS, "AutoStar version 4.2g". Thursday I downloaded this OS onto the telescope. It had to go down a serial port at a dismal baud rate, taking 15 minutes (been years since I've given consideration to "baud rates"). Then I put the scope through a set of calibration routines involving Polaris and an illuminated reticule eyepiece, and everything paid off: the pointing accuracy improved. When I observe, I hunt geosynchronous satellites (geosats), and I aim to locate ones that are in some way outstanding or noteworthy. But to succeed, as the saying goes, you gotta get yer ducks in a row. OK now, let's see, Starry Night Pro (SNP) has been given the correct Lat/Long copied and pasted from the telescope's GPS [and BTW corroborated with the GPS chip inside Carl Larson's nifty "iPod Touch"]. OK now, the laptop's system clock has been synced with the GPS atomic time source. OK for sure SNP is using the latest satellite ephemerides, not some old outdated ones. Also the scope goto accuracy is demonstrably good. Now then! I should be able to click satellite icons on the screen and watch with delight as geosats appear in the eyepiece.

But no. Strange, everything seems right; the scope seems to slew to likely spots, but no geosats appear. None. OK start from the top. SNP has been given the correct Lat/Long ... the PC clock has been synced ... the ephemerides are good, etc etc. All double-checked. But no satellites. What could it be? I felt like a police interrogator: OK buddy let's go over your story again; let's start from the top, just the facts. On the night of Sept 26, was your SNP using the correct Lat/Long ...?

I went back and tried over and over; I rebooted the laptop, I rebooted the scope; no luck. At four o'clock AM I figured it out! Damn it! Meade's new OS does not automatically adjust for daylight savings, unless you TELL it to. I had to go into the menu and specify DST=ON. Why shouldn't this be ON by default? All my observations had been wrong by precisely one hour! Now the night was over and the sun was ready to come up!

During the day we sat around in the shade and planned the wasps' demise. We located a hole-in-the-ground entrance to one of their subterranean nests. Turley grabs a can of lighter-fluid and shouts, "Dare me?" He stalks over and squirts at least 8 flammable ounces down the hole, then a line of fluid leading away, then he touches a lit match to the line. Next the wasp-hole is on fire, and we kids gather close and watch wasps getting fried trying to come and go from the hole. Rob Hawley, Calstar prez, supervises this wasp-fire with apprehension. But the flames die out and the yellow-striped creeps resume coming and going like always. We retreat to our shade and think: maybe if we had a giant vacuum ...

Carl Larson still keeps the 8" mirror he originally ground himself as a teenager, and this year it's mounted in a new OTA with a new secondary and spider, and custom rings and dovetail for his AP 900 mount. But it's messed up and we debate about what the problem is. He demonstrates that one spider leg is substantially shorter than the others. Why the hell do they make this leg shorter but not mention it in the instructions? The short leg is for offset collimation, right? But it's shorter by more than a centimeter, which is way more than necessary for offset collimation. Another problem is that the OTA apparently has orthogonality problems when attached to the mount. Oh dear.

Not to worry! An advantage of large star parties is that you've got plenty of experts on hand. For collimation issues you've got Marek A. Cichanski! Set a canopy over the scope to provide work-shade in the afternoon, and Marek will solve your spider and collimation issues, with his characteristic courtesy, modesty, verbosity, expert authority, and fine attention to detail.

Next for the mount's orthogonality and accuracy troubles you got Chris Patel! Lubricated with a cocktail on a fine and pleasant evening, spouting a stream of infectious good-natured humor, unfazed by the news that Wamu had just laid him off, and managing to tend his own imaging set-up the whole time, Chris proved to be a great help to Carl in sussing out the issues with Carl's mount. In the end Chris declared Carl's scope and mount good enough to image with, which is the highest compliment.

So, we joked, perhaps by the final night of Calstar, Carl will be done "jiggering" and ready to observe! He'll have enough time to slew to, like, M22, log it, then pack up, and look forward to next year. But Carl and I agree on this point: that jiggering with equipment is every bit as fun as observing.

John R. Pierce has a camp chock full of cool things. A van with four captain's chairs, a folding trailer with kitchen and beds and furnace for complete comfort, all outfitted with dim red lights to be astro-friendly, a library of great music, the finest in cheeses, salami, and liquor, a pair of vintage mountain-bikes -- and a portable misting-system. This is a tank pressurized with a hand pump and connected to a hose with atomizing nozzles every foot or so. He pumps the tank and hangs the hose up in the oak tree, then we stand around getting blissfully misted in the afternoon. As an even better idea, he uncoils a garden hose from his trailer and runs it over to one of those water spigots at Calstar, which have surprisingly good pressure, and operates the misting nozzles unattended directly from that spigot the rest of the day.

By the last night, my scope is tuned up, working great, and hitting every satellite on the first try. I perch my friend Carl on a stool in front of my Panoptic eyepieces, then sit down at the laptop and start clicking icons on the screen.

"The next one is supposedly a rocket body, just a degree away; the scope will move only slightly. OK now, can you see it?"

"I see it, but it's very dim and not flashing; a 1 or 2 on a scale where 5 is best"

"Right, then next the scope will move several degrees, to what I believe is an out-of-service tumbling geosat".

"Nothing. I can't see it. Oh wow! It flashed! Uhh... now it's gone. Ooo! It flashed again". It was BS-2B (YURI 2B). This guy would flash very brightly, I mean like mag 3, then disappear completely for 12 long seconds, then flash again. During those 12 seconds you'd be sitting thinking, "Did I just imagine it? I can't see it now. Is it still there?" Then Bam! "It's like a flashbulb!"

From now on whenever I set up my scope I'll try to observe this geosat if possible. In North America it stays continuously above the horizon, and by this I mean all day and all night, for 39 days, then dips below the horizon for 64 days, then comes up again and remains constantly in the sky, day and night, for 39 days, and this cycle continues. It'll be visible during Dec/Jan, all during April, and again in July/August.

Carl and I studied a lot of geosats in a short time, and we picked a favorite. For a tumbling good flasher, call SIRIUS W (MARCOPOLO 1). Google it and you'll learn its life story. It had a full career, but now it's retired in a graveyard orbit. In addition, I always recommend XM-1 and XM-2 because they are bright and showy geosats that fit together in the same eyepiece.

Now "Tips" Turley, in a good mood with a couple drinks under his belt, ambles up to my scope and begins speaking in no uncertain terms:

"Can this Meade recover from a power failure? My Vixen mount handles a loss of power. Comes right back where it was without losing alignment. Can your Meade do that?"

"We've been over this, James. There isn't much need ..."

"Don't quibble! Just answer the question. My Vixen can pick up right where it left off. Can't this piece of sh*t Meade remember where it was?"

I just love it when he gets like this, and I'm going to play along, though I know I'm on the losing side of the debate:

"It can perform a 'Park' if you tell it, then resume ..."

"Park? Stop quibbling. You're quibbling! What good is 'Park'? Do they expect you to predict ahead of time when you'll accidentally lose power?"

"Well, the thing is, I don't often lose power; the battery and cord are secure beneath the scope ..."

"Bulls**t! The cord isn't secure! I tripped over your f***in' power cord up at Lassen, remember? Yanked it out of the socket! And of course you took forever to re-align!"

"Well -- that was just you tripping over the cord one time"

"It was you leaving the f***in' cord out where everybody trips over it! Don't even try to quibble with me!"

I'm busting up laughing, red-faced, grinning from ear to ear. This is one reason I like Turley. He has a way with words: succinct, unwavering, profane, and hilarious. I know (or at least I believe) he's doing this in fun, but he never cracks a smile; he remains adamant in his body language and tone of voice: "Now explain why this piece of sh*t Meade can't remember its alignment if you accidentally turn it off!"

"Well ... there are a lot of active parameters: the GPS coordinates, the level-sensing, the time-of-day, the various 'syncs' I may have performed ..."

"What? How many parameters can there be? I bet they all fit in 1K! Can't Meade keep one f***in' K of information in non-volatile RAM? And for the time-of-day, isn't there a system clock? My Vixen, now ..." I could not answer him, because of laughter, but also because, I admit, Meade scopes should probably be able to recover alignment after a power failure.

I brought a Ukulele and a beginner book and left it sitting around my camp, and several people tried it. I learned C and G7 and F and D7, then late at night I was singing "My Darling Clementine" and "Home on the Range" and "On Top of Old Smokey" and "Marine Hymn" ["From the Halls of Montezuma ..."].

One day Mark Johnston picked up the Ukulele and gave it a quick study. He got C and F and G, then flipped right to the back of the book to examine chord fingering charts. "Oh so that's E, huh? Good. Now I need an A ..." Within minutes he was playing the Ukulele at an expert level. Next he picked up my son's six-string acoustic guitar that I'd brought. Then I realized why Mark was able to master the Uke so fast -- turns out he's a guitarist. He used to play in a band. On the six-string he began playing Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" right down to each note. Greg LaFlamme strolled up and took a turn on the six-string, and Mark switched back to the Ukulele. They fell into the Eagle's "Tequila Sunrise", singing together and playing the solos and everything. Turns out GML also is a fabulous guitarist. Man! I didn't realize these TACos had this hidden talent.

Saturday I complained that Chez Dan was taking too much time and effort and reducing my enjoyment of the event, but Marek and Carl and James simply told me to ask for more help. Saturday night I started bossing Marek around like a drill sergeant:

"Marek! Front and center! Wipe this pan! Drain this cooler! Put all these boxes in the van!"

With his help and Carl's too, we cleaned and raccoon-proofed the camp and prepped it for breakfast, and were done in less than 15 minutes. They were right, I just need to ask for more help, and even get bossy.

Sunday morning I set up the cooking and serving tables over by the side of the road, far away from the eating tables, with the idea wasps might swarm over there and leave people at the tables in peace. It helped, but only a little. Rashad got packed up and hit the road early. As he drove by the roadside food-tables he rolled down his window and shouted, "Is this a drive-through?"

Lots of people got an early start Sunday. The field was nearly empty by noon. Carl's scope, as it had been in prior years, was the last scope off the field. On the way home, somebody had to have an accident near Salinas and cause a traffic jam, but I was back home by 5:30 PM.

That was Calstar 2008! Lots more things happened that I haven't described. Sorry this ER is so short. Here is a link to pictures:

http://www.fototime.com/inv/358D11A565FBDE0

With friendly regard from Dan in Mountain View