Texas Star Party 2009

Bill Drelling

It was a 1400 mile drive to TSP. I didn't get to hit the road until 1000 Saturday morning, but managed to knock out 1,000 miles and finished the last 400 on Sunday. It was a great drive.

To my surprise I found Darrel Lee and Alvin Huey having dinner here Sunday night at the ranch. They are here for the week. It is great to see some more folks from the Bay Area on the upper field.

The first two nights have been great. The skies are clear and dark, but we have had some periods of soft seeing. Humidity hit 74% Sunday night. Last night it was only 34% and seeing was good. I've been shooting M51 and Omega Centauri using my FSQ and a 2X Powermate--that brings the FL to over 1000mm. Tonight I may attempt to shoot the Rho Ophicus region. My image from last yeay did not come out as well as I had hoped. That is a large area of sky and will take multiple frames to get it right--plus it doesn't rise until after midnight.

While the camera and scope are collecting the data for the images, I have been looking thought scopes with Alvin, Rick Singmaster and others. I will leave the details of what we are looking at to Alvin. Suffice it to say we've seen all the eye candy (M104, M51, M82, M81...) through some big dobs and a lot of other obects from catalogues I have only heard of in passing. :)

I can see shelling out the bucks for a big dob in the coming years, but I am not sure how well my fabulous collection of Meade Plossels will work in it! They say owning a boat is like, "owning a hole in the water into which one throws money." Well if that is true, then perhaps one could say something similar about astronomy...it is like "owning a black hole into which one throws money."

For now, tired but happy,

Bill Drelling