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Return of the NVT I could barely believe it. Could it actually be happening? Was it possible? Had the weather gods been appeased? The forecast for Okie-Tex 2024 looked too good to be true. I actually kept a screen shot of the forecast somewhere, but I can't find it to include here. The previous year, 2023, we had been clouded out after a fantastic first night, which was the dark-sky debut of the 12.5" NVT prototype that I built just before the star party. We had observed as long as we could until fatigue set in, but the night after that a storm flashing lightning through the sky and then clouds shut down my observing, and then it was cloudy for most of the rest of the week. I did, however, have a great time with it at WSP in early 2024, so I knew what it was capable of under good skies. This year appeared tantalizingly different according to the computer models, and the smoke appeared to be staying away. It's annoying that poor forest management and arsonists can have such an effect on our astronomy hobby. On this trip, my first destination was Los Alamos to drop off some local beer for a couple of friends who had moved there, visit a bit, do some sightseeing, and then turn around and head back to Okie-Tex after a few days. After staying for a Wednesday night in Pratt, Kansas, I arrived in the late afternoon Thursday at my friends' place. We got together with other friends over a nice dinner and some beverages, had a Friday to slow down and see some of the sights in the local and not so local area, and then Saturday morning it was off to Okie-Tex, about a five hour drive, arriving from the west for a change. As I drove east, I noticed many cars stopped along I-25, probably picking pinon nuts. It seemed to be high season for those. Approaching Okie-Tex from the west is very interesting because in the background behind the "Welcome to Oklahoma" sign are some rock outcroppings and mesas that look more like Arizona, Utah, or some other western desert state. I dropped things off where I was staying in Kenton and made the short drive to the Okie-Tex site where I set up my 12.5" f/2 NightVision Telescope (NVT) again, almost in the same place that it sat while the clouds hovered overhead the previous year.   John (above right) and Cindy and Rex (below left) were already set up, and Kara (above left) was joining me at the star party after her two day drive from Idaho. I helped her set up her 18" scope for visual observing, and we looked for shade and then it was time to prepare some dinner. We cooked meals as a group as usual, and Kara had arrived with some pre-cooked delicious dishes. I filled my cooler at the grocery store in Los Alamos on my way out of town. John and Cindy had lots of food in their RV, so we were mostly set for the week. Of course we had quality craft beer and other beverages for cloudy nights and some afternoon socializing.   The streak begins  I
could have arrived earlier, and some did if they were helping with
setup or were staff or Oklahoma City Astro club members, but I was
content to arrive on the first day of the star party, which was
Saturday. I was told they had already had several beautiful
nights before most arrived.Saturday night was beautiful - not cold, and very clear and transparent. Some people did stop by for NVT viewing, but the crowd was not too heavy. We observed until around 2am, and then had a small beverage as we recollected and celebrated a very nice night of observing. It does not take a lot of time to cover the sky with the NVT and see most of the H-alpha highlights, but it is easy to get lost in the random wisps of H-alpha in the southern and overhead parts of the Milky Way. As people stopped by, inevitably I would go back to targets I had already seen that they requested, so there were usually multiple views of the same object assuming they had not set. At this time of year and location, the H-alpha nebulas in the tail of Scorpius set fairly early behind the mesa, so those must be viewed right away. One interesting region that I discovered and explored during this star party was the area of waves of H-alpha nebulosity north and east of the Propeller Nebula in Cygnus. There was wave after wave, in a very large region of the sky that made it fun to scan around. Experienced astrophographers were intrigued with scanning H-alpha objects and regions in real-time and seeing live images of the objects. Kara was busy star-hopping to and logging some challenging galaxies and planetaries on her observing list with her 18" for most of the night, and from time to time when I could I would go over and dark adapt a bit after nightvision use and check out those objects. John was using his 22" f/3.3 with a similar mission, though with goto. No one was bored. Sunday dawned sunny, and we slept in as much as possible. That night was another beautiful observing night after a nice self-cooked dinner, and this was one night to stay up late, as it turned out. We had had one night to adjust to the new schedule, and we observed until 3am or so when we finally got tired and had looked at most of the notable NV objects in the sky that we could with the NVT. We ended the night watching Orion rise, and observing the nebulas in central Auriga and the Crab Nebula. Since I generally see those much higher in the sky at the Winter Star Party in February, I usually take this part of the sky rising as a cue to go to sleep. We concluded the evening with a light beer tasting and I slept very soundly after a second deeply satisfying night. Monday was a hot day, and we just tried to stay cool. There was not much of a breeze to help with that, but the winds returned that night, limiting observing for most, but not for me and the NVT! Wind will result in more dust and haze in the air, but we still observed because people were stopping by and the sky was still quite nice. However, we did not stay up as late, and we concluded the night with a little bourbon sipped while hiding in the wind shadow of John and Cindy's RV and a tree by it. Observing in the wind takes both the moisture and the energy out of you! Tuesday morning was cool after the windy night had brought a minor weather front with no clouds, so I took that opportunity to go for a quick twenty minute run to get a bit of a workout in. Then we had brunch and coffee before my two talks, which I traditionally give on Tuesday. This often makes me the opening speaker for the star party, with two talks, back-to-back. My first talk was "Basic Optics", and I explained the basics of how telescope systems work complete with very simple diagrams. I think everyone learned something they didn't know, and even I did putting the talk together because I am an electrical engineer, not an optical engineer, and I have not taken serious optics classes. My second talk was an updated "Nightvision used for amateur astronomy", and I went through how nightvision works, how it has evolved, how it is used for afocal and prime focus observing, filters, and I also talked a bit about the 12.5" f/2 NVT. By the time the talks were over, I was pretty tired, and I think I was a bit dehydrated, so it was nice to relax afterward. Allan and Sam had arrived from Australia, and Allan had brought some of his excellent, award-winning home-brew beer. As I recall, there was a barrel-aged barleywine and a barrel-aged stout, and both were amazing. There's nothing like beer tasting on a beautiful day with friends and fellow amateur astronomers. I believe Tuesday was the day that the wind picked up a shade tent or two around the field and dropped one on a nearby vehicle, and one telescope was knocked over. It's necessary at Okie-Tex to tie everything down because the wind can gust unpredictably and without warning, night or day. It's also prudent to look at the weather forecast ahead of time and be ready for such things as dry fronts blowing through with gusty winds in the middle of the night. Tuesday night was clear again, and after a bit of observing, Allan and Sam called it a night early due to time changes and travel fatigue, and I ended up going through the Barnard catalog using the Nexus on my 12.5" NVT. Most could not be seen to the extent I thought they might, but a number of them were very interesting objects. I used mostly unfiltered nightvision for this observing quest. Below is a photo from my earlier talk.  I also believe it was this Tuesday night/Wednesday morning when we woke up to some noise from gusty winds. We came back over to the observing field at about 5am to make sure our telescopes were not blown over. We were staying in Kenton, and the wind was howling in the valley there, but it was not too bad at the camp. I took a couple of precautions and then we went to Kenton for more sleep.  Sushi and more clear skies Wednesday dawned sunny, and if you have read these articles before, you might know that Wednesday afternoon brings one of the great spectacles of our Okie-Tex experience - it's the annual sushi spectacular put on by the Widemans and Bagwells. We gather by the Wideman trailer, and following the traditional announcement and music, Tom emerges with sushi rolls and I take photos, then Vance does the same with his offerings.   Then the rolls just keep coming and coming and coming, and eventually we are all full and sometimes we get rolls to take with us. We did this year, and it made a great late-night snack and observing fuel. Here's another example of the food, and it just kept coming. Many trips were made to the serving table for rolls, soy sauce, and wasabi.  There was also quite a bit of sake served for a sake tasting, and though I like it, I was saving myself for the biggest beer tasting of the week that would occur later on. Here's a shot of the sushi group as best I could get them in one frame!  A bit after the sushi-fest, many of us gathered by John and Cindy's RV for one of the largest beer tastings that I can recall. We had 18 people and lots of excellent beer. This made it a bit tricky to split one beer between all of those involved due to some notorious individuals over-pouring their share, but eventually they were chastised sufficiently and soon fell into line. Throughout the week, Kara and I had a surprise for some of our beer-tasting friends. Kara was able to do glass etchings and cut custom masks so that she could put whatever we wanted on glasses. So, I bought some good quality beer tasting glasses, had them sent to her, and she etched custom text onto each one, personalized for each person based on past events or whatever I felt like. So, as we had a chance, we presented each person with their custom glass, at a tasting if possible, and had fun enjoying their reactions to what I had decided should be on their glass. For example, Rex's glass reads "Go Pokes! If they don't go, start drinking." Many of those glasses are in the photo below.  This was one of the larger beer gatherings we've had for a while. We used to do one every afternoon, but it just puts me to sleep and I have trouble observing early in the evening. So we've been doing a bit fewer afternoon tastings and more impromptu after observing.  After the tasting, the annual Okie-Tex prize giveaway was noticeably faster and more efficient than in previous years, and we were done before dark and went back to observing. I don't have any notes for this night, but I believe it was when I first started hearing about people getting sick, and literally heard it while we were observing. We had heard some reports of people coming down with something, and it turned out a viral outbreak like what happens on crowded cruise ships was spreading through the camp, and many were having a bad night and then a bad day or more after that. It was determined later and announced at the end of the star party that it was not food-borne, it was being transmitted from person to person through contact and contaminated surfaces. One of our group of friends was affected, and he was going up to the dining hall for food and other things. The rest of our group did not get sick, but we definitely took precautions when using common facilities and porta-johns. I feel bad for the star party organizers, but they do have at least one doctor among them, and the staff immediately took proactive measures like increased cleaning and took other steps to help quell the outbreak. I did not take a huge number of images with either my camera or using nightvision during this star party, but I did get enough to make for some interesting things to show. Here are some of my nightvision images, starting out with Okie and Tex, the plastic flamingo mascots, high on the mesa with a backdrop of defocused stars below left. The other two images are some star fields with dark nebula and the Lagoon Nebula, M8.     Here are some nebula images, the first two are in the southern Milky Way. The third is the Propeller Nebula, and the fourth a region nearby in Cygnus with waves of nebulosity that I really enjoyed scanning through and showing various passers by.     On Thursday we had Kara's delicious carnitas for lunch. We did a light beer tasting before dinner with Allan's superb barrel-aged stout and a few other beers, as well as prickly pear margaritas, and Oklahoma delicacy, courtesy of LeRoss. There was some dust and haze in the air, but Allan and Sam were up for a while observing with us though they had to turn in early for their early morning departure so they could drive back to Dallas to catch a flight. I had found out that a group of photographers was going up on the ridge to shoot photos, and I had asked them to let me know when. On this night I was informed they were going up, and I used this as a test of my 12.5" NVT. They were 1/4 to 1/2 mile away, and I was able to clearly see what they were doing as they set up tripods and cameras and moved around. I shot photos and video, and watched as they took their own group photo. I could recognize each person fairly easily, and I was impressed with what I was seeing. Video shows their movements clearly, but I can only share stills here.   As the group finished up their photography on the mesa, they descended back down, guided by glow-in-the-dark tape they had placed on trees and rocks earlier in the day while it was still sunny. This gave them a safe route up and down. On the way down, they stuck the tape to various body parts, and then they stopped by my telescope to see how the images had turned out. It was a very sci-fi-worthy effect watching them walk down the observing field and it was entertaining to listen to the comments of those nearby. Of course the opportunity was taken to get a photo of them with the 12.5" NVT with the Milky Way in the background. It was like a weird sci-fi movie featuring nerdy astrophotographers who were returning from an excellent photo session, and whose imaging rigs were probably imaging the whole time while they were away climbing mesas and taking selfies and group photos. Yes, I did watch them doing this with the 12.5" f/2 NVT, and I have video.  After this Allan and Sam turned in, and I took a break from nightvision to observe visually with John and Kara, who were logging planetaries and galaxies in their 22" and 18" telescopes, respectively. The leftover sushi roll was devoured by Kara, John and I around midnight because we were hungry again. Sorry Cindy, you missed out on that one because you were asleep. On Friday morning we got up a bit earlier so we could pack up the telescopes in a bit cooler conditions. We had carnitas and chicken for lunch, and then it was time to relax. We were all tired and had had plenty of observing, so we ended up leaving the very long prize drawing a bit early and we just sat under the stars and enjoyed some beverages and conversation. That's always one of the most enjoyable things about gatherings like this. Below, John and Cindy show off an excellent beer from earlier in the week.  It's always good to see our friends in a place with such excellent skies, and lucky me, I got to spend that time under the skies with Kara, and it doesn't get much better than that. She had a great time logging new objects and I think she finished her observing list with time to spare. On Saturday morning we got up fairly early, made sure we had all of our stuff collected, and headed our separate ways. Until next year under the Kenton skies, everyone. Cheers, prost, slainte, and get out under the sky. -Mike Lockwood, -Lockwood Custom Optics, Inc. |