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.