GSSP 2012 Observing Report

The Golden State Star Party is a yearly event held under very dark skies near Adin, in Northern California.  How dark?  Well, here it is on the fantastic Dark Sky Finder right on the edge of a black zone.  You can look all over California on the map and find only a handful of black sky sites, and most are tiny islands.  True, this is on the edge of a grey zone, but compared to my normal semi-dark observing location, Joshua Tree, CA, on a blue/green border it’s a wonderful sky.  Definitely worth the 11 hour drive from Los Angeles for four nights.

Heading Up
I split the trip into two parts, leaving Tuesday and staying overnight in Sacramento.  This was a nice opportunity for me to visit some friends and family, and it allowed me to get to the location fairly early on Wednesday without having to leave at some insane hour in the morning.  Arriving somewhat early is important since setup takes a while and, like most star parties, the use of white light after dark is prohibited.  

The drive is actually pretty beautiful after Reno, NV. The elevation starts to build and the landscape is rolling hills with light tree cover.  Not long after I crossed back into California I passed this tree, full of shoes. I'm not entirely sure what the story is here... actually I'm not even a little sure. I had to turn around and take some pictures.

The Shoe Tree.....

Forever a piece of me in California

The rest of the drive was uneventful.  The weather looked great as I was heading north and I stopped several times to take photos since I had plenty of time. 

The Road to Adin, CA

I arrived around 3:00pm after a leisurely drive through the very scenic countryside, giving me plenty of time to setup my camp and telescopes.


Wednesday

Unfortunately, my early setup did me no good.  By the time I arrived it was cloudy, and the weather reports indicated it would stay that way through the night.  As the afternoon progressed, more and more anxious astronomers arrived, unpacked, and watched the sky.  A few folks did not even bother to setup their scopes predicting the cloudy night to come.

There ended up being a few gaps in the clouds after dark, just enough to keep me awake and hopeful until almost midnight, but not enough to actually observe anything.  Total bust on that count, but I met some nice people camping around me and got a chance to check out some of the equipment being setup.

Thursday

I woke up late in the morning and the sky was still grey, if anything it looked even worse than the day before. My apprehension for the evening was building, but I had a whole day ahead of me to walk around and talk to some folks about their equipment. Attending a star party is a great way to learn about, and potentially try out, a host of equipment. I love walking around and seeing what people have brought. Since everyone is there for the same purpose, it's easy to strike up conversation. There is always something to talk about, even if it's just our common desire for clear skies.

As I started to walk and talk, one of the first camps I stopped at had two scopes built from DobStuff.com kits. I was already starting to think about my next telescope and building a kit scope like this was high on my list. I'm kicking myself for not getting any pictures, but the scopes were beautiful! They were 12" and 18" inches with similar caramel color stains. I've seen pictures on the website, but the scopes look even better in person. The two owners had nothing but good things to say about the kits and Dennis Steele who makes them. I had a chance to try moving them a bit, and the motion was smooth and the whole assembly seemed rock solid. Part of this was probably the skill of assembly, but it was very promising and really inspired me to get going on my new scope.

I spent several hours walking around until the rain started. There was rain off and on for the rest of the day, and I had to move my scopes under the pop-up shade structure I brought, but it was a nice time overall. By evening the rain had stopped, but it was still cloudy. I hoped for the best, but had a sinking feeling I would be turning in early again tonight.

Each night there is a speaker who gives a presentation. Thursday's speaker was Mel Bartels speaking about "The Nature of Telescope Design". It was a wonderful presentation covering some of his past and current telescope designs along with a bit of engineering and philosophy. When the talk was over everyone shuffled out of the tent into a cloudy night... but it did seem LESS cloudy than before the talk.

Almost magically over the next hour or so as the twilight turned to actual darkness the clouds completely disappeared! It was fantastic; by the time I would have started observing anyway the sky was clear and looked magnificent. Checking back in my log I gave it a 7 for seeing and an 8 for transparency (out of ten). For my highly objective rating system this is pretty darn good.

My plan for the night was to try for every Messier and bright NGC globular cluster I could in Sagittarius. I started with the humble globular cluster NGC 6440 and logged it at around 10:30pm

"Very small and dim. Took a lot of searching and high magnification to identify as G.C. Unresolved even at 200x. Round, with tight core and uniform gradation out to edges"

The night was very warm and I spent the next three hours making my way through Sagittarius logging 13 globulars and two bonus objects; NGC 6822 Barnards Galaxy and NGC 6818 the Little Gem planetary nebula:

"A mini ring nebular! Very small and beautiful. Non stellar circular glow in 13.5mm, shows dim center and ringlike appearance with 6mm. Seems to have blue-green coloring"

It was an incredible night.  Tracking down a lot of smaller, dimmer NGC globs was a real treat.  

Friday 

The day started out pretty warm and I was woken up early by the morning sun.  I decided to go out and explore the countryside and surrounding towns.  The closest is Adin, CA, and the GSSP is an event around those parts.

Adin is a very small town with a few shops and homes. It's got a nice general store where you can pickup any supplies you might need. There were signs in the window advertising the GSSP public night that very evening.

I returned to the star party and walked around a bit. The sky was cloudy, but I had hopes it would clear up. My intention was to do some wide angle astrophotography with my Canon T3i. Nothing fancy, just the camera on a non-tracking tripod with a 24mm lens. I had recently purchased an intervalometer (timed shutter release controller) and was hoping to use it for some time-lapse series. To test everything out I took this time lapse during the day. You can see the clouds drifting over the observing field.

Fortunately the sky cleared up before dark and it looked like another wonderful night. The Public Night started around 9:00 and lots of folks from the surrounding towns came to visit. After showing a few people Saturn through the scope, I started observing in earnest a bit after 10:00. I rated the seeing a 6 and the transparency an 8 again. Before I dove into my evenings observing plan, I setup the camera facing south to catch Sagittarius and the milky way passing by. I started the intervalometer and went to work.

My plan for the night was to get all the M objects in Scorpius, and a couple of NGC's that I thought I might be able to see with my scope, then move over to Ursa Major to view a few Messiers I have missed to date and revisit some old favorites. I ended up observing 25 objects in about 4 hours, which has to be some record for me. I'd never seen many of them before, and most I'd never seen so well. One of my favorite of the night was the Lagoon Nebula, which I was observing for the first time through a new OIII filter I picked up at one of the vendors just that day!

"OIII Makes a great contrast difference. Helps show full extent of nebulosity with dark lanes much more visible. Split easily into several lobes. Fills 3/4 of 13.5mm ( 0.9 deg) field"

I also checked out the Trifid and Veil nebula, both of which looked great with the OIII.  It made for a much nicer view than my narrowband nebula filter.  Before I packed it in, I retrieved the camera and took some images to stitch together a panorama of the milky way

Several images stiched together, ISO 3200 f/2.8 30seconds each

I got a little off center towards the north end of the milky way, but I think it's one of the best I've taken so far.  The time lapse turned out pretty nice as well.  You can see a few little clouds sneak in right towards the end, but I don't think they bothered anyone.  Just look at how dark they are, with no light from the ground to reflect back, they are like huge dark nebula.

Saturday

Saturday was very sunny and hot. It also featured two of my favorite parts of the GSSP; the Swap Meet and Telescope Walkabout. The swap meet is free for anyone to grab a table and display their wares. It ranged from people with one or two items, to folks who brought bin after bin of odds and ends. I was sorely tempted by several items, including a used Williams Optic refractor, but held off knowing that I had a bigger goal in mind; namely my new big dob.  

Anyone who has an interesting telescope and wants to share can sign up for the Walkabout. It's basically a bunch of folks walking from scope to scope on the list, hearing a brief speech by the owner, and then asking questions and discussing.... and it's great. There were home-made bino-scopes, ATM projects of all sorts, a few high-end commercial pieces and this interesting re-build of a Meade Lightbridge:

Rebuild of a Meade Lightbridge 16"... into a BBQ

Yes, that really is a 16" Lightbridge. Well, at least the primary, secondary and focuser from one! It features a 24" webber BBQ, bamboo truss poles, and a bike rim upper cage. It's dead simple, the whole thing sits in a milk crate and it actually has pretty good motion; sort of like an oversized Astroscan. The owner said it sets up really quick, although he admitted it does not hold collimation well. I'm not sure this is the way I want to go, but it did show how simple and inexpensive a telescope could be... minus the mirrors!


One of my favorite scopes I saw as I walked around was not on the tour, and there was nothing particularly innovative. It was just large. Very, Very Large. Sadly, I did not get to speak to the owner or catch a glimpse through it at night, but it was impressive to behold.

28" Ultralight Dob. Notice how it dwarfs the 10' shade structure

The ultralight, relatively small, mirror box made this seem much more reasonable than the 20"+ Obsession type scopes, but it's still probably more than I would want to handle on a regular basis. Besides, I'm completely decided that I want a flat foot scope. I've been up ladders in the dark, and the views are great, but I feel it would really interrupt my observing flow to climb up and down, reposition the ladder, and such. Besides, some computerization would be required to make the scope usable as you would not want to be actually looking for objects on a ladder, just observing objects.

It stayed clear all day and the night seemed even better than the one before. As the sun set I spent some time with Mars and Saturn waiting for the darkness to settle in. I was somewhat surprised by how steady the air seemed, and I judged the seeing a 7 tonight with 9 transparency... almost as good as this location can be!

Since I had a long drive the next day, I only spent about three hours observing and logged 12 objects. If the total seems low, it was. My targets were a little tougher and I did not find everything I was looking for.  My favorite observation of the night was also the last of my GSSP experience: NGC 6369 Little Ghost Nebula. This small planetary is magnitude 11 according to my list, and was tough to find low on the horizon. It was very satisfying to find, and created a yearning in me to go seek out other difficult planetary nebula.

"Not much more than a dim, bloated star. OIII helped in finding and identifying, but the view is better without. Need to try again when higher in the sky"

Sharing the View and the Impromptu Eyepiece Shootout

I also spent a fair amount of time that last night with some of my neighbors checking out the views through their scopes. One was a standard 15" Obsession, with servos and the whole kit. The view was great, and it was interesting to use a tracking dob. The second was a home built 16" newt on a split ring equatorial. It was a beast! 700 pounds! He transported it in a custom trailer and got it in and out with a winch system.

Towards the end of the evening we had a little eyepiece shootout. The representative from TeleVue was loaning out eyepieces and they had each checked one out during the day. There was a 17mm Ethos (~$800) vs. the 20mm Nagler (~$500) providing roughly the same true field of view (TFOV). Viewing the Veil Nebula both eyepieces gave fantastic views. To me, the higher magnification of the Ethos produced a slightly darker background, but it also had a strange sort of pincushion effect near the edges. It was not objectionable, but a few people commented on it. The Nagler produced a better corrected image as far as I could tell. For kicks we also compared my 32mm TeleView plossl. It has a slightly smaller TFOV and lower magnification. I really enjoy using that eyepiece, it's fantastic and not too expensive, but after the wider field Nagler and Ethos the 58 degree apparent field of view (AFOV) did seem a little tight.

The Nagler and Ethos were both fantastic, but for it's slightly cleaner view and the price difference, I think I'd choose the Nagler, hands down. Heck, you could almost get TWO Naglers for the price of the Ethos and an 82 degree apparent field is no slouch! Spending some time sharing the view through a telescope, and talking about the hobby we all love, is one of my favorite aspects of going to star parties. I'm glad I took it easy the last night and just took the time to enjoy the company, it was a great way to wind down.


Heading Home

I woke up early on Sunday to beat the heat tearing down my camp, but still I ended up sweating in the heat by the time I was done. It's always sad to say goodbye to people I got to know over a few days, and to leave the observing field. I stopped to snap this last picture as I drove out of the gate to head home.

The Entrance, or in this case, Exit, to the Golden State Star Party

If you've never been to any Star Party, I suggest you try to attend one locally. There are several near Southern California, check my yearly events links to the right, and if you feel like making the drive, I hope to see you at GSSP 2013.