Anyone who wants to read a nice, long account of a star-less star party, read on. Those with more self-respect, come back later, and maybe I’ll have something interesting to say about a completely different topic.

Friday, July 25
19:15
Arrived! The location of the party was moved due to a small forest fire near bustling Foxpark. Apparently, due to prevailing winds, the smoke might have reduced sky transparency somewhat. The turn-off for the original site featured a poster and a pouch of photocopied maps and directions to the new site, which were amazingly unclear. I had to ask the firefighters stationed placidly at the nearby Incident Command Post/Little 600-sq. ft. Shack for help interpreting them, which they were happy to do with only low-grade patronization. Worse, the Cheyenne Astronomical Society web site made no mention of this change of venue this morning. [I was later to find that the party was called off as early as Wednesday morning, which also was not reflected online. Apparently their ISP is in the process of being acquired by another ISP, which somehow prevented them from functioning as much of an ISP.]

19:45
The tent is up, and it’s raining.

19:58
Did I mention rain? Yes, it’s raining alright. I hope it stops.

20:13
The rain is done, so I go for a walk around the park to scope out the…scopes. I’m pretty sure this field–a fairly oblong oval of several acres of grass, flanked by pine trees–is a parking area of various winter sports that go on in the area. Normal star-party fare: lots of Newtonians and Schmidt-Cassegrains in the 8″-12″ range, a few massive Dobsonians of 20″ and above.

20:35
Did I say the rain was done? Yes, it was, until I stepped out to have a walk and made it to the other end of the park. I am now very wet, and back in my truck. This is not looking good.

20:51
It occurs to me that even if this lets up, it will be quite humid on this field tonight, and dewy optics will be an issue. I hope my little heater is up to the task. The thermometer says 53.5°F outside, 68.6°F inside. And did I mention stuffy?

21:01
Too bad I set that tent up. I could still make it home around midnight tonight if I hadn’t unpacked at all, but I’m not about to go pack up in this! Still raining quite hard. I’m just going to hit the sack here in the truck, and decide what to do with the rest of the weekend tomorrow.

Saturday, July 26
7:50
Been dozing for the last two and half hours. I was up briefly at 1:30 this morning, when about half the sky was cloudless. The stars were brilliant, and the Milky Way looked about ready to cast shadows on the ground, but things were still not clear enough to take any pictures. I’m not sure whether to chance it for tonight, or just break camp now and salvage a part of a Saturday at home.

11:26
Alright, I’m staying. I’ve been doing some reading and walking around a bit, and even met a nearby camper with a solar filter. Ellsworth was kind enough to let me have a look. I saw a sunspot (which was small but showed great detail) and faculae, but no limb darkening. No prominences either, since this was not a hydrogen-alpha filter. Still, I don’t have a solar filter, so this is fun.

I’m going to go explore some of the four-wheel drive trails I saw on my way up here and find a spot to eat lunch. The scope is in the tent, and the rest of the stuff is in the shade. Things should be fine.

Oh yeah, the weather report scuttlebutt for tonight is not good. Some thunderheads are building to the northwest.

13:00
Been tooling around a bit. I took Forest Service road 517H and found a nice wooded area in which to set up my table and chair and eat. None of these trails are strictly four-wheel drive by my estimation; the extra clearance is nice in some cases, but I could have gotten where I am now in my old Mazda as much as my current Tacoma. The thing that strikes me about this forest is how much dead wood there is lying around! I don’t spend a lot of time in the woods, but I wonder if this is what logging proponents talk about when they argue for “thinning.” This place would burn like mad if it were drier and just had a little bit of encouragement.

13:17
Found a cool-looking remnant of a log cabin a few hundred feet up Forest Service road 517E. The timber doesn’t look frontier-age, and there are a few nails in it here and there that are round, not square. I’m not sure what date that implies, but this doesn’t look more than fifty years old to my untrained eye. And I shouldn’t say it’s a remnant of a log cabin proper; it looks more like somebody got about four or five logs high into building a cabin, then left.

15:10
Back at camp! It’s completely clouded over. I’m going to take a nap.

16:30
Woke from dozing to the sound of applause! Did I miss the raffle? I was sure they said 5:30!

18:10
It turned out that the applause was for the introduction of the featured speaker, a twenty-something engineer from Ball Aerospace, come to tell us about the Hubble Space telescope and future astronomy missions. Then a presentation of some local dark sky zoning issues, a raffle during which I won nothing, and thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen.

Now, dinner.

18:51
Dinner was prepared and eaten hastily. It was sprinkling the whole time, ready to let loose in another downpour at any bite. Broke camp quickly, got the truck packed up, and got inside before anything serious came down. I’m off! Gonna sleep at home tonight, since it’s more comfortable and no less amenable to dark-sky observing than this place.

We’ll try next year! Maybe drive the in-laws’ motor home and make a family weekend out of it.

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• Posted by Tim on Monday, July 28, 2003 at 5:21:54 pm PDT
• Category: Miscellany
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