JULY 31, 2014 | OKANOGAN VALLEY GAZETTE-TRIBUNE
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STAR PARTY AT EDEN VALLEY
TMSP to stay? BY BRENT BAKER
Smoke and fire in the region couldn’t keep them away, and thunder and lightning didn’t chase off 300 amateur astronomers from the Table Mountain Star Party at Eden Valley Guest Ranch last week. Held at the ranch for the second year after fire torched the original Table Mountain site near Ellensburg, the gathering featured people and telescopes of all types, including families with small children equipped with nothing but binoculars to lifelong enthusiasts with immense, complex instruments that required trailers to transport them to Robin and Patrick Stice’s pasture. This year’s attendance of 300 didn’t include another 20 that paid registration but didn’t show up. That was largely considered a success for organizers, who felt that misconceptions about the extent of the Carlton Complex fire kept some people away that had planned on attending. Attendees that I had a chance to talk to cited only two disadvantages for Eden Valley Ranch compared to the original Table Mountain site: the long drive for Puget Sound attendees (which has cut attendance by about 20 percent from its old digs) and tradition. However, those who did come cited the Stices’ hospitality vs. camping on National Forest Service land; safer roads to the site (many travel in RVs); better access to town (the Table Mountain site is much further, time-wise, from Ellensburg than is Eden Valley from Oroville); and better, darker viewing skies. It should make for interesting discussions about the future of the Table Mountain Star Party.
Above, Star gazers at the Table Mountain Star Party at Eden Valley Guest Ranch enjoy a crystal clear night on Thursday, July 24. Amateur astronomers use red light to maintain their dark adapted “night” vision. Right, top, Zach Drew gives daughter Lily a chance to peer through his telescope at the Table Mountain Star Party last week, hosted at Eden Valley Guest Ranch. The event featured educational and fun events during the day for all ages, as well as outstanding views of the bright stars of the Okanogan Highlands night skies for telescope enthusiasts. Bottom, right, Patrick and Robin Stice were one again awarded a Hulan Fleming work from the TMSP committee in thanks for their hosting the star party for the second straight year. The Eden Valley Guest Ranch owners were lauded for both the quality of the setting and their hospitality. Below, Some telescopes at the Table Mountain Star Party were as much pieces of art as they are functional viewing instruments.
The heavens from the Highlands Performing surgery is not for the faint-hearted. Performing it on an emergency basis in the dark, with a dim red light providing the only illumination ... that’s another matter entirely. Putting a telescope “under the knife” turned out to be an impromptu service provided by one of the directors of the Table Mountain Star Party that descended on Robin and Pat Stice’s Eden Valley Guest Ranch last week. The patient, thankfully, was not a living being (though it seemed to have taken on a life of its own). Those who attend the star party have all levels of love for astronomy, and all levels of experience with telescopes and their associated accessories. Think of a classic car show, but for science geeks. But getting started in the hobby can be difficult, especially with balky equipment. One family had brought with them a small telescope that they’d never quite
been able to get working prop- sin. It takes awhile for the eye erly, one that was programmed to become adapted to the dark, to search out stars, planets, and which is necessary to see “faint galaxies at the direction of a fuzzies” through a telescope that computerized control panel. bear little resemblance to the Zach Drew, one of the TMSP ultra-Photoshopped images you directors I met when see on the internet or I swung through the TV news. star party last year, So, to avoid diswas set up with his rupting other observown telescope next ers’ viewing sessions, to the balky unit and it was major internal offered to help consurgery on an unfaquer the little beast. miliar piece of equipHe got a lot more than ment, in the dead of he bargained for, not night by red light. only dealing with the Zach and I had hit computerized set up it off - he was the HALF-BAKED photographer that but the fact that the Brent Baker manufacturers hadn’t supplied the spectacproperly installed the ular lightning strike telescope’s mirrors. photo we ran in the That’s switching the accelera- Gazette-Tribune from last year’s tor and brake pedals in your clas- TMSP - and he’d invited me to sic car, albeit with less hazardous spend the night viewing with consequences. his scope. Thanks to the crazy Probably 100 telescopes were week before the star party (fires, set up in close quarters on the storms, flash flood threats - most observing field; using anything of our readers know the drill) I but a red light to find your way hadn’t been able to arrange for around is an almost unforgivable the transport of my own tele-
scope to the site. While Zach was poking his screwdriver amongst the delicate innards of the neighbors’ balky scope, I took his telescope (a reflector with a 12.5-inch mirror and a simple, manually operated “Dobsonian” mount) for a drive to share sights with the neighbors as they waited for the completion of Zach’s lifesaving surgery. It was pretty satisfying to hear the exclamations of surprise at the views through his scope. Symbols and spots with arcane numbers on star maps came alive before their eyes. M57 ... a smoky ring floating in the midst of a starfield, the remnants of a star that had blown off most of its mass, leaving just its faintly glowing core at the center. M13 ... a sparkling ball of a thousand suns that you could just discern individually, other than at the very dense core of the cluster. M17 ... a bright smudge of gray shaped like a swan, complete with a few subtly-shaded
“feathers.” In that cloud, though you can’t see it visually happening from our distant locale, stars are being born. Speaking of stars ... M31 ... a galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, so distant that its light takes more than two million years to reach us. That’s actually about as close as it gets as far as galaxies go, and it is so big in the eyepiece that it overflows the field of view. Finally, with surgery completed, Zach gave a quick lesson on the computer controls, and the excited “newbies” were on their own journey of exploration with their now functional little scope. Zach and I spent the next two nights searching out some the lesser known, but no less unique, sights of interest of our own, some that one or the other of us had never seen before. I only got to experience half of the five day TMSP, but it was filled with fresh discovery, new friends and a regained sense of perspective. This is why we came.