Well, not everything goes as planned on a observation night. Let me explain....Friday night, our club, the Brazosport Astronomy Club, had scheduled an observation night at our dark sight. Our dark site is at the end of a cul-de-sac in an undeveloped area of a rural housing development. The sight offers horizon to horizon views and a relatively dark sky, well as dark as you can get living in the Houston - Galveston corridor. The area as I said is rural and it very common to see deer and hear coyotes after dark.
There were three of us out with our scopes that night. I had my 10" Dob, which has now come to be named "Zoe". Maggie had her 6" Meade LS and Jim had his 11" Celestron on its Losmandy mount. My choice of the low-tech dob was once again re-affirmed while watching Maggie and Jim fight through the alignment process on their scopes. I probably had bagged a half dozen objects before they got their scopes aligned. I am not sure if Maggie ever was successful in aligning her scope.
Well it was about half way through the observation session when we noticed a vehicle that seemed to be circling around us on the rural roads that ran around our site. That is not too uncommon, as there is always some traffic on these roads, however, this vehicle abruptly turned off the road and started to drive towards us across the pasture. Well this was new! At first we had thought this might be a club member unfamiliar with the access road into our site. Well, that theory was soon to be discarded as the vehicle pulled up and out stepped a Texas Park and Wildlife officer. "Howdy folks. What are y'all doing back here in the dark." It was evident that the officer had seen our red lights and assumed we were poaching deer. Well our telescopes soon betrayed our true purpose as "Star Poachers." The officer looked at Zoe and exclaimed " I bet you can see Jesus up there with that!" Well I couldn't locate the Jesus object, but nether could my two Goto companions. I did treat the officer to views of Jupiter and the Orion Nebula that he he probably will not forget.
Well the officer departed after enjoying a few views and we spent another hour or so "poaching" some of the best views of the Texas skies. Zoe and I bagged a few program variables and a couple of clusters in Canis Major...but more about that next time....
Clear skies;
rw
