First the Geminid meteor shower was clouded over in December, then the Quadrantids meteor shower was cloudy in January. To complete her trifecta mother nature clouded out my view of the February total eclipse of the moon.

It was apparent early in the week that my chance to photograph, let alone see the eclipse was in jeopardy. The weather models had been close to reality for the past days so the upcoming forecast of clouds was not good. Then we got blasted with a strong cold front Wednesday that made me rethink going any distance for this event. My north Missouri dark site had snow on the ground, daytime high of 8 degrees F and a forecast low of 1 degree. Not doing that.

Yet on Wednesday evening things looked possible. To the left is the infrared satelite image showing the approaching front and clouds around 18:00. I thought it would stay relatively clear for awhile. I witnessed the start of the eclipse and marveled at how the Earths shadow was dramatically dimming the full moons glare. Then in came the clouds, just before the complete eclipse started.

Game over man.

I created a short video clip to try and capture some of the magic of the Okie-Tex star party, the look and feel of the stars over the observing field. Click the title screen to the right or click here (5mb WMV file). This is from Wednesday night around midnight. The camera is pointed to the ESE. The activity you see is in the east field, while the west field is out of view to the left right. I am surprised I didn’t capture any hint of the lightning occurring somewhere around Amarillo, TX. You would occasionally see a flash in the night sky from the storms that developed after they passed us.

I have a new appreciation for creating a video clip, it takes time. This video is made from many individual 40 second exposures taken with a Canon 20D. Some color correction and brightness adjustments were done as a recipe through Canon’s DPP. These images were a test of camera placement, field of view and timing. Next year I’ll do a longer sequence and put more processing into the images.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

It was terrific to have a few more hours of sleep.  The daytime sky when I got up was clear and bright,  I couldn’t wait for darkness to arrive.  Its Friday and while some have left other participants have just arrived.  In fact, as night fell a local couple and their two kids happened to stop by our group.  They were from the area, having heard about the star party from other locals. To their good fortune two members of our ragtag group, Bill and Chuck,  have a talent for showing people the wonders of the sky.  It was fun to watch and talk with them.

From Thursday nights aborted session I had a game plan. As true darkness came I decided to fill the time until vdB14-15 was high enough by shooting the western portion of the Veil. Unfortunately the clouds in central New Mexico came sooner than I expected. About 10:00pm local time the sky was getting cloudy and I stopped shooting. Darn it.

The clouds were not solid like the blanket we had Thursday. The visual observers can cope with this situation much better than an imager. While you could try to expose, the aggravation of dealing with the autoguider losing the guide star and the effect clouds have on the exposure are not worth it. About  2:00am it did not appear that we would clear up so I crashed for the night.  The visual guys reported it was pretty good around 5:00am, which the satellite data supports.

Based on  the weather pattern and various forecasts I decided I would leave the star party early. Before crashing Friday night I put some of my stuff away. Saturday morning it only took a few hours to pack up.  I was on the road just before 1:00pm.

As I traveled home I thought this had been a real good star party. The weather was good for its rare to get clear skies every night at any star party.  In the weeks to come I’ll process the data for the images I captured.

Five nights, can we get a straight? Thursday evening is the Great Okie Tex Star Party Giveaway (part one). To my surprise I won a red led flashlight and to the delight of the crowd they were yelling ‘how-ward’. This yell started years ago after a couple of high school girls looking for their science teacher were wandering up and down the field. It has continued ever since and is probably very puzzling to a newbie. Rumor has it that the yell happens at the Texas Star Party (TSP).

The night started good and I decided to add exposures to my Cave Nebula image (Sh2-155). Wind was a bit stronger than any of the previous nights but manageable for my setup. I had just started a new target, vdB14, when low clouds began appearing in the east. This was about 1:00am. I checked the infrared satellite images to see how long this would last. It was not showing anything, I’m guessing it was low level moisture that flowed into the area. In little time we were covered over. And in little time I went to sleep.

While I would have preferred to keep imaging, a little break to catch up on sleep was also a good thing. It turns out that it cleared up at 4:00am and a few of the true die-hards were up observing.

Four straight nights of good to great weather! It’s interesting how sky conditions vary at night. To the untrained eye it may not seem like anything is different. But to us astronomers we note the change in transparency, objects do not have as high a contrast, the sky does not seem as dark. The seeing, or how steady the air is, can vary tremendously as well. These conditions are not mutually dependant or exclusive, truly great nights are clear, transparent and steady.

During analysis of the images from Wednesday night I found that many of the later exposures were affected by thin high level clouds. I decided to reshoot IC417 and NGC6914. Up until now I had not had any user mistakes or glitches while imaging, which is unusual for me. Tonight I had a few dumb ones, like the camera control cables hanging up on the mount midway through an exposure. That’s just being sloppy and it’s possible I just haven’t got enough sleep.

During the night I climbed partway up the side of the mesa to our north west. There I placed a camera that continuously took exposures for awhile. This was a test of an idea I have been kicking around for the past two years, to try and capture both the stars and activity on the field. After two hours I retrieved the camera. I found that coming down a hill at night is far harder than going up. It was also interesting to find that the temperature thirty or forty feet higher than the observing field is significantly warmer.

Sunday, October 6^th, my day one at Okie-Tex Star Party (OTSP), holy cow I think over half the registered attendees arrived on Saturday, one day ahead of me. However, as forecast, Saturday night was cloudy with high winds – exactly why I did not come down. Been there, done that.

Sunday night started out poor being on the edge of the passing storm system. Yet after midnight it started to clear and we had a very transparent sky the rest of darkness. While the seeing was poor the joy of being under truly dark skies made up for that little problem.

Early in the morning the views were fantastic. Bill was putting on a show with his 22 inch Starmaster. We had a superb view of G1, a globular cluster in the Andromeda galaxy. I also had the best view of the horsehead nebula I have ever seen (H-beta filtered). That’s the beauty of astrophotography, once I was on target and tracking I was free to wander around check out everyone else’s stuff.