Table Mountain Star Party (Washington State)

For the past 8 years I've been going to "Star Parties", amateur astronomer events, that on the west coast at least, are held in remote mountain primitive camping sites. Remote and primitive camping to get away from city lights and mountain to get above the clouds as much as possible.

Table Mountain Star Party is in Washington state in the mountains between Ellensburg and Wenatchee. Their website is here: http://www.tmspa.com/

Anyway, it's usually attended by 600 to 700 people, all coming in campers, trailers, big RVs or people just sleeping in the backs of their trucks. Of this crowd I've only seen 2 other trailmanors there and I'm by far the one who most frequently attends this event. I have several friends who I mainly see only at these events. With that as an intro, this year's trip was unusual for me as I was going by myself. My wife and youngest kid (17) had other things going on and I was a little nervous about precision parking (TMSP really packs them in) without my trusty co-pilot (wife) so I side stepped this issue by arriving a few days early.

Just as I was settling down to a lonely dinner on the first night (some other astronomers were there but we're all pretty much doing our own stuff at this point, unpacking telescopes and what not) I heard a knock on my door. It was indeed one of my astronomy buddies. He recognized the trailmanor right away, figured it was me and came on over! A quick dinner, I convinced him to set his telescope up close to mine and this year's event was set!

An overhead view of the whole site is below. (This is a photo from their website circa 1998 before the 700 person limit was imposed by the forest service.)

[B_and_D]

Looks like a great gathering!

Did anyone get to view the meteor shower on the 12th? DH, DS & I sat out on our front deck and saw the best show we've ever seen between 11 pm & 12 am. It was amazing, so many huge shooting stars! The night before was fogged in, but the evening of the 12th was completely clear. We really got lucky.

Children really enjoy seeing these things, they are so rare and wondrous.

In my case, sadly no... these events are scheduled for the "new moon weekend" in July, though since next years is so early in July the TMSP folks are having it in August about in time for the meteor shower. Otherwise typical PNW weather at my home... cloudy on the peak day.

Originally Posted by jamida

For the past 8 years I've been going to "Star Parties", amateur astronomer events, that on the west coast at least, are held in remote mountain primitive camping sites. Remote and primitive camping to get away from city lights and mountain to get above the clouds as much as possible.

Great stuff Mike. I always enjoy hearing how other use their TMs.

Curious... do you have a way to take digital pictures through your telescope?
I figure in this day and age, this should be common.

Hi Ed:

You really don't want to get me started on my astronomy hobby...

Yea I've tinkered with taking pictures. It's more of a pain than you'd imagine. Focusing is tricky, and if you're doing long exposures (say more than 60 seconds) then you need to have a pretty accurate way to track the motion of the earth. All of this I have, but (a) it can always get better and (b) while I'm still learning it's a pain to set up on the road. Also, given how detail oriented the above 2 tasks are, I find that if I'm photographing I'm not very social!

Regardless, the easiest way to get started is "piggy back" where I put my DSLR on the back of my scope and the DSLR is armed with a 300mm lens. The scope tracks the sky. Piggy back mode with "only" a 300mm lens is more forgiving of a less-than-perfect alignment/tracking system. The pictures below are from that set-up.

One of my favorites... the crescent moon and the Pleades.


The Andromeda Galaxy


The Lagoon Nebula (and the Triffid nebula above that).


However "inept" I may be at this, many folks are quite adept at setting up their imaging rigs at these star parties. On a lark I googled for one of my fav things to see in the night sky specifically looking for someone who took an image at Table Mountain. I was in luck. This fellow's site is here.

Another example (same object... the Veil Nebula, but this just a select portion of it) is here... again this was at Table Mountain, but a few years ago.

Those are absolutely gorgeous, and maybe someday, when I'm more confident I'll drive out there and see these sights.

Carol
2004 TM 3124ks
2007 Explorer

Hi Carol:
A few things...
First... if your "confidence" issue is driving your TM up a steep mountain slope filled with switchbacks, I understand your concern as I had it myself. First time I went to TMSP I camped at a near by KOA and drove the truck up there. But by the time the next year came around I was fully comfortable with driving the TM up to that site.

Second, there are star parties all over the country, not just on the west coast. wikipedia has a reasonable list by state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_party

Originally Posted by jamida

Hi Ed:
You really don't want to get me started on my astronomy hobby...

Yea I've tinkered with taking pictures. It's more of a pain than you'd imagine. Focusing is tricky, and if you're doing long exposures (say more than 60 seconds) then you need to have a pretty accurate way to track the motion of the earth. All of this I have, but (a) it can always get better and (b) while I'm still learning it's a pain to set up on the road. Also, given how detail oriented the above 2 tasks are, I find that if I'm photographing I'm not very social!

I didn't think about the "tracking" part. Assuming you must need to program where you're currently located, I can certainly see the issues you face.
I guess it's good that you can take picts if you really need to (special astronomy event), but for the most part, just looking and socializing is what you're going for.
Great shots though!!