2004 Oregon Star Party Trip Report

Shannon Miller, Novice Amateur Astronomer
August 17, 2004

Well, I just got back from the Oregon Star Party (OSP). Though I didn't get much observing in I still had a great time. Rumor has it that some 750 people attended, though I've yet to see the final official numbers.

I had planned on arriving a couple of days early, but duties at home prevented me from going to OSP until Thursday. I didn't leave until noon, and stopped at several stores along the way for groceries, last-minute supplies, and a search for a portable roll-up table, so I didn't arrive at the OSP site until about 7:30 PM... just in time to eat a turkey dinner before they closed the food booth.

The site is at Indian Trail Springs in the Ochoco National Forest, on a treeless plateau at a little over 5,000' elevation. It's in the middle of nowhere (Central Oregon) and there is no light pollution there whatsoever -- except the occasional "light leak" by an attendee's car dome light or camper! Though the ground is a little dusty, it's otherwise a fantastic site for telescopes, with a 360-degree view of the sky from the horizon on up. GPS coordinates for my viewing location there were N44º 17.896', W120º 8.314'.

The only problem Thursday night was that the sky was mostly cloudy there. It appeared to be clearing up by dark but then I found myself incredibly sleepy, and more interested in getting some shut-eye than doing any observing, though I did set up my telescope just in case I woke up in the middle of the night. Before going to bed I attended a basic constellation identification program. It was very good. Green laser pointers are banned at OSP except during this program but they sure make it nice to point out objects in the sky to others.

I did indeed wake up at about 3:00 AM, and when I went outside the sky was as clear as can be. It was a new moon (read: no moon) and the Milky Way was incredibly bright streaking across the sky. You could easily walk around with just the starlight -- no red flashlight needed at all. Some folks were up but most in my immediate area had already gone to bed. Quiet hours begin at 3:00 AM and I feared disturbing some nearby tenters/campers if I actually used my telescope so instead I just took in the naked eye view and with my 7x35 binoculars. I noticed a red star way down on the eastern horizon and recognized it as Betelgeuse rising. And I recognized the Pleiades. There were lots of meteors, some of which were really spectacular. I saw an [unknown] satellite pass overhead, and had seen the Cosmos 1220 satellite in a near polar orbit earlier in the evening. After a half hour or so I went back to bed and when I got up at about 7:00 AM it was already mostly cloudy again.

Funny story about the meteors. During the constellation identification program there was one object the speaker was pointing out that I had missed, because from my position I couldn't see his green laser line for that object. So I asked him to show it again. He pointed out two stars and drew a line between them with his laser, and at that very moment a meteor streaked between those very same two stars, along the same path he'd just taken with his laser pointer. Everyone was impressed. I asked the presenter to do that again but he declined. ;-)

Cousin Dave arrived on Friday around lunch time. We scouted the grounds together and looked at other telescopes, and hoped for improving skies. The sun was shining most of the time, and it was hot, so we had some optimism for the evening. But it didn't pan out. We attended a "Basic Sky" talk and looked at some telescopes but the sky remained clouded up through the night.

Photo 1: Sunset at OSP. Shannon's telescope (10" f/10 LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain) and Dave's telescope (4.5" f/9 NexStar 114GT Newtonian) are in the foreground. As you can see we are almost the only ones optimistic about the overcast clearing at some point during the night (it didn't).

The sky remained mostly cloudy so Dave and I walked around to see if anyone was actually looking at anything through their telescopes. We stopped off at Dan Bakken's 41" Dobsonian and he let me climb up his 12-foot ladder and take a peak through it. Unfortunately whatever it was he had it aimed at (and now I forget what it was), was obscured by clouds by the time I got to the eyepiece. He invited us to stop by the following night for another chance.

Dan's telescope was the largest one I saw at the star party. He calls it "Hercules" and he ground the 41" mirror himself (by hand)! He built it in 1996. This photo doesn't really do it justice as it's only pointed up 30 or 40 degrees or so here, but trust me -- it's a very big telescope. Dan is super nice and always happy to let passers by take a peek through it. This photo was taken the next day with Cousin Dave standing in front of it.

Photo 2: Dave standing next to Dan Bakken's 41" Dobsonian "Hercules."

There was another telescope there that had particularly impressed me, but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it. It's a home-made (very professionally so, I might add, with inlaid wood designs) 10" f/5 Dobsonian telescope that, when packed, qualifies as carry-on baggage for the airlines! This telescope is amazing. Light, compact, and very powerful. The truss tubes break down into small sections yet when the scope is fully assembled -- which took only a few short minutes -- the assembly feels tight and solid. Unfortunately the owner does not build them commercially, and the instructions he used to construct it were from a web site which he says is no longer online. But this is definitely a design worth keeping an eye open for. If it were available commercially I bet it would sell like hotcakes.

I had worried a little about coming up with a "program" for observing at OSP, but that was worry for nothing. The OSP staff handed out a great booklet full of observing targets that should be good views from this time and location, Iridium flare and satellite pass predictions, and interesting articles.

I was disappointed that Meade didn't come to OSP. I had a list of accessories I wanted for my Meade telescope and was really hoping to find a big selection. There were several vendors there, but most brought only smaller items like eyepieces and binoculars. A couple brought various telescopes for sale. There was an ISP set up there -- via satellite -- providing wireless internet access for the entire site. There was a fee for this of course, but you could enter his trailer and get weather and news (and check the clear sky clock) for no charge. He said that to use the wireless service, just turn on your laptop with a wireless-B card installed and point to any web site. When your laptop tries to resolve the name to an IP address, his service intercepts the request and returns the IP address for his local site instead. At that point you're prompted to enter your credit card number and away you go. Pretty neat concept, though also a little scary. I tried it but it seems I was too far away for it to work for me. Since I arrived so late I ended up camping pretty far away from most of the action.

I did manage to spend some money, however. I bought a pair of 11x70 binoculars. I was looking for 10x60's, but the $39 pair I found were too poor of quality, and the $269 pair I found were out of my price range, so I compromised with the $119 11x70's, knowing they might be too heavy for practical use without a tripod. I bought a piggyback mount for my camera so I can put it on my LX200 for longer sky exposures -- it turned out to be defective so I had to return it for replacement by mail since they didn't have any more in stock. I bought some really cool tiny magnetic blinking red LEDs that are powered by tiny hearing aid batteries. I thought I could use them to mark my tripod legs while observing so I don't trip over them, but they seem to be too bright -- at least at a very dark location like Indian Trail Springs. I bought a drive motor for my 2" refractor telescope from my childhood days; that scope has a German Equatorial mount so I hope to construct an adaptor for mounting my camera to it for some really long-exposure photography. This drive motor cost only $10 new and I'm wondering how it differs from the apparently identical $50 and $100 motors the other vendors were selling (it pays to shop around!). I really need an observing chair, but none of the vendors had any for sale by the time I arrived. There was one as a door prize but my luck is such that I'm more likely to be struck by lightning than to win what I want in a door prize. I offered to buy the door-prize one from the person who won it but he didn't want to sell it. Furthermore, though I had hoped otherwise, he was aware of its $200 list price and it was clear that if he did decide to sell it, it would be for at least that amount. So, my lawn chair is still in service next to my telescope, and only rarely is it the right height to be usable. :-(

Photo 3: Our observing set-up. That's Dave looking at Venus through his 4.5" f/9Newtonian on a altazimuth mount.

Saturday night was only slightly better than Friday night. We heard folks talk about how great it was on Tuesday and Wednesday. I sure wish I would have gone earlier as originally planned. We uncovered our scopes thinking we'd get to see something, but it wasn't long before we realized it wasn't going to happen. However, shortly after sunset we looked for an Iridium Flare -- a very bright momentary reflection from the shiny side of a satellite as it passes overhead. This was only my second Iridium Flare observation and Dave's first. We saw one at 8:44 PM and its magnitude peaked at about -9. This flare lasted a good 10 seconds. There was a second Iridium Flare at about 10:19 PM and we saw that one too, though it was clouding up by then so its light was sporadic.

I set the alarm to go off about every 90 minutes throughout the night and kept looking out to see if the skies were improving. They didn't. However, at about 5:30 AM we did see a clear section of sky with Venus shining brightly, so we got up and pointed our scopes to it. Neither one of us had aligned our scopes and there were no reference stars so we had to track Venus manually. Eventually the sun rose, and we continued to track Venus.

Photo 4: Dave observes Venus through thin clouds at sunrise.

Dave had wondered how Venus would compare as seen through his telescope vs. mine. We both had great views. I figured that since my scope had more aperture that Venus would "fade" for Dave before it would for me. We decided to just keep tracking it until that happened. Well, by 9:00 AM the sun had been up for 3 hours and Venus was still easily seen at about half-phase through our telescopes, though it hadn't been naked-eye visible since shortly after sunrise. We finally concluded that Venus would never fade away and that we'd be tracking it until it set (or went behind a thick cloud), so we finally gave it up. It was sure fun comparing our views and tracking the planet, though. Dave's scope -- a Newtonian on an altazimuth "half-fork" mount -- shows the planet upside down and backwards. My scope -- a Schmidt-Cassegrain -- shows it just backwards but right-side up. The "bowl" of Venus' crescent, as seen through Dave's telescope, pointed towards the sun (as seen outside the telescope), which was confusing until we realized that made sense. Ha! Tracking was of course the same for both of us: we both had to use the UP and RIGHT arrows of our scope controllers to keep the planet in view. (This, too, is now obvious since our controller's arrow keys are relative to actual telescope movement direction.)

Photo 5: Still observing Venus, even with the sun high in the sky! We concluded we could probably watch it all day through the telescopes, though it hadn't been naked eye visible since shortly after sunrise. We knew that if we were to lose track of Venus, we'd never find it again, which led us to a self-challenge for a future date: locate Venus "out of the blue" by hand (without using an aligned telescope's GOTO function).

Dave packed up and left around 10:00 AM. All but a very few others also left throughout the day.

Photo 6: "Last astronomer standing." Well, almost. There were a handful of others (mostly crew) as well. At least I had plenty of working space around my telescope!

I decided to stick around and see if Sunday night would bring any better skies. It didn't. Instead I got to play around with photographing lightning -- something I'd always wanted to do.

Photo 7: Shannon's LX200 stands covered up (right of center) while a lightning storm passes nearby. This shot is taken from approximately the same angle as photo 5 (above).

During the day on Sunday I finally read my LPI (Lunar Planetary Imager) manual and I was hoping to photograph Venus on Monday morning, but the skies were overcast the entire night. On Monday morning most of the last remaining stragglers left, with only a couple of other people still packing up by the time I left around 11:00 AM.

Despite us doing hardly any observing, I had a great time at OSP. It was fun volunteering (I directed traffic, worked the registration tent, and helped with clean-up). The vendors were interesting, even if there were fewer than I had hoped and Meade wasn't there. The presentations were very educational, informative, and interesting. And it's always a blast just walking around looking at other telescopes and talking with fellow amateur astronomers. I'm really looking forward to OSP 2005!

OSP photos by others:

http://www.photoaccess.com/share/guest.jsp?ID=A48DB02B3C0&cb=PA

http://www.theforrest.org:8080/~rjf/osp2004/index.html

On the way home I passed by an interesting old dilapidated log cabin in the Ochoco National Forest, which I had to stop and photograph. It would sure be interesting to know the story behind it. Imagine children growing up here. Oh, if those logs could talk. ;-)