I saw a couple threads for specific events at OTSP this year, but no General Updates post. So thought I’d start one. Please don’t merge this into one of those other threads.
I’m set to head there tomorrow and just checked the long range forecasts. Wow! It’s even better than it was a few days ago! Completely clear every night, all night long. Through 2 Oct, anyway. Slightly cloudy Wed, 2 Oct and Friday, 4 Oct.
I saw the same thing in 2019. 2018 was a washout (litterally. Soakie-Tex II), but 2019 had at least 4-5 hours of clear skies every night! This year might make up for last year, where we had one clear night the whole week.
If you’ve been undecided about coming because of the weather, forecasts are for clear skies every night, all night, for the entire week! It’s been gorgeous the last two nights!
Another gorgeous night! I had 4 all-in-one EA scopes running. Got this with my new Celestron Origin. I’m very pleased with it. Mike Madden requested I image Andromeda, so this is the result of 3 hours of stacked images.
My best images are coming in with my new Celestron Origin. Here’s the Lagoon Nebula, and the Dumbell Nebula from last night.
Today is the second day of the Pixinsight class. Jon Talbot is a great teacher!
Forecasts are great for the rest of the week! There’s still time to come out and enjoy some great skies at Bortle 1!
I’ve been having some issues getting a couple of my all-in-one EA scopes aligned. I think we’ve finally figured out the problem is there are so many stars visible, the scopes can’t find the calibration stars it uses for plate solving!
Didn’t set anything up last night. Was still fairly strong at 0400 when I took my daily constitutional. But was calm when I went up for breakfast. Hopefully will be better tonight.
But we had a crisis this morning in the new building. Jody (the fantastic caterer) woke Danny and Larry this morning and told them “there’s water running out the door in the new building!” I understand they woke everyone in the bunkhouse and went running over to try to avert disaster!
What a wonderful star party this year! Clear every night, no rain at all. Viewing was not perfect, some nights had some haze (I’m guessing from smoke from Wyoming or other places west), but even with that, it was pretty darn good!
The only downside was the bug that swept through the camp. Definitely a bug, NOT food poisoning. If you caught it was pretty bad, but most recovered quickly. I was fortunate and I didn’t catch it.
