Goodbye for now, NSP; Spring of 2022 is a no-show; Destroying pocket watches

 Six Nebraska Star Parties and done (for now)

After attending six consecutive NSPs, I think I'm ready call it a done party. The distance, expense, and vagaries of the weather have led me to explore the alternatives of in-state parks and campgrounds. This is not a knock on the NSP itself or its organizers! The 2014 through 2019 NSPs were splendid experiences (aside from the rainy/cloudy years).

Now that the pandemic is winding down thanks to vaccines (I'm double-boostered) it's reasonably safe to travel, so this year I'll be trying a little gem of a park called Niemackl Lake Park. Drive distance is 3 hours compared to 8.5 for NSP. This means in a worst-case situation, it's possible to do a one-day round trip to home in order to retrieve some crucial forgotten item.

Niemackl has about 25 times as much light pollution as NSP, which sounds bad at first. It's more a case of 25 times almost zero. One place I've imaged with good results is in a yellow zone where the added light is about 12 times greater than at Niemackl, so I think it will be fine. 

One minor concern is horizon glow to the southeast from the town of Morris (population 5,300, distance 15 miles). This is much like the case at another former imaging location near Windom (population 4,400, distance 15 miles). Windom generated discernible glow to the SSE, but it was very tolerable; low targets in Sagittarius were essentially unaffected. Having Morris nearby also means retail services are at half the distance of  NSP to Valentine.

Now When will this start to happen? When Spring finally arrives!

Spring of 2022: Not here yet...

We seem to be trapped in a see-saw pattern of a few days of cloudy, well below normal temperatures, followed by a single average-temperature sunny day followed by a couple of days of rain. The tiresome theme is clouds and cold. This morning it was snowing. It was only a few flakes, but it's indicative of how April has been. Pushing up toward the upper 50s by the end of the week, though. And then, if the European long range model suggests, it will probably leap right into summer, complete with 80s. Typical.

...So the winter hobby continues.

I've been destroying pocket watches and hopefully learning a little as I do so. I started with a non-working Elgin and three non-working cylinder movements. The Elgin actually came to life a little, and ran for 15 minutes. I'll be working on that one more now that I have the proper oils. 

The cylinder movements were a complete loss. People say those are difficult to service, and I was simply unable to get the escapements seated properly. I wasn't duped into buying them, I simply was too ignorant to recognize them for what they were.

After that I moved on to more modern movements, a refurbished wristwatch with an Indian movement and a new 6498 clone from China. The Indian movement ran poorly and on inspection it was dirty inside and had a damaged bridge. Cleaning it and fixing the bridge didn't help much. It still runs poorly. I'll work on that again.

The clone is fine, but I made the mistake of taking apart the shockproof jewels for the balance wheel. I cannot get those back together, so while the balance is still able to oscillate there's a lot of looseness. I've ordered a second identical clone and will use that one for an eventual astronomy large-faced wristwatch. 

I've also got a used wristwatch-sized Chinese skeleton movement that comes in a worn hunter style case and runs very well. I'll eventually strip that down and re-oil it. 

I've been prowling antiques stores for pocket watches but have purchased nothing. The pocket watches they sell are all working and priced like it. This is great for collectors, but I'm still in the non-working realm of watch servicing. Perfectly satisfactory are movements that don't run but have intact balances. My hope is that flea markets and estate sales may prove the best source for these.

Nebraska Star Party Weather

If last year was your first trip to NSP you probably came back wanting to return in 2015 to enjoy even more mild weather. I know I did.

 2014: Uncommonly Cool

This was not a year that people returned with stories of blistering heat or gear-toppling thunderstorms. The first four days were a cool eight or nine degrees below normal, nighttime lows were in the 40s twice, winds were light most of the time and no precipitation fell.  Daytime skies were generally clear to partly cloudy, and no weather (thunderstorms, fog, haze or smoke) was reported. There was an amazingly tiny total of 11 cooling degree days for the period compared to a normal of 50.

Daily summary for Valentine during NSP 2014: 
Date          High Low Departure
July 27 (Sun) 84   50  -8 
July 28 (Mon) 83   49  -9 
July 29 (Tue) 78   54  -9 
July 30 (Wed) 86   49  -8 
July 31 (Thu) 88   52  -5

2015: What to Expect

The average maximum temperature is around 90 and the overnight low (which you'll feel only if you're still up observing or imaging at sunrise) is around 60. Every day has about a one-third chance of a thunderstorm, so of the five days it could be expected that there be one or two with thunder.

Daily Averages for Valentine during NSP 2015:
              Average   Record 
Date          High Low  High Low
July 12 (Sun) 89   60   109  42 
July 13 (Mon) 89   60   107  41 
July 14 (Tue) 89   61   105  44 
July 15 (Wed) 89   61   110  40 
July 16 (Thu) 89   61   113  45 

In other words, last year was an outlier in a good way. You shouldn't expect it to be repeated this year, but no one will complain if it is!

Another Star Party Cloud-Out; Camera update

Today is the Saturday of the Two Rivers Spring Star Party and I'm posting this blog when I should be enjoying dark skies. The sad fact is that the entire run of the party has been filled with of clouds and rain and I've bailed out rather than sit in a tent for the remainder of the party.

AMENDED: The IR Satellite loop suggests that Saturday night is starting out clear. It won't stay that way, though; by midnight or 1 A.M. clouds will cover from the west. It still wouldn't have been a suitable night for my imaging.

A tale of woe: My last several parties are the Iowa Star Party (two out of two nights unsuitable), The Northern Nights Star Fest (three out of four cloudy/rainy nights) and now the TRSSP (three out of three cloudy/rainy nights). That gives me a whopping one night out of nine that I could see the stars.

The next star party is the Nebraska Star Party in July. Maybe I should ask them to pay me to stay away.

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The T2i arrived sooner than expected! It's amazingly clean--it looks almost brand new, and more importantly looks to be 100% functional. I've communicated with Gary Honis about the modification, and he's got a slot open at the end of May. Maybe I'll have the modded camera back in time for the NSP? It could ride my CG-5 mount and do wide-field imaging while I'm using the CCD for other objects.

Nebraska Star Party Weather

(Continued cold and clouds have curtailed all my imaging activity, so thoughts continue to turn to the summer)

I'm still toying with the idea of attending the Nebraska Star Party, which in 2014 is from July 27 through August 1. I have some concerns.

A minor concern is electrical power. I run off two deep-cycle batteries, and it's unlikely that I can get more than a few nights off my gear. I'll be coming from the Prairie Grass Star Gaze. It's likely my batteries will need to be topped off before getting to NSP or I might have less than two night's capacity.

The bigger concern is the weather, both the heat and the potential for damaging storms. This has led me to investigate the weather that's typical for late July. Here's what I've found for nearby Valentine:

TEMPERATURES (all in degrees F) (source 1)
---------------------------------------------
July 27- Average, 89/61, records 106/43
July 28- Average, 89/61, records 108/44
July 29- Average, 89/61, records 110/42
July 30- Average, 89/61, records 105/38
July 31- Average, 89/61, records 110/44
August 1- Average, 89/61, records 106/44

WEATHER PROBABILITIES (source 2)
---------------------------------------------
Entire period, daily chance of thunderstorm is about 39%; daily chance of rain is about 50%.
An average five day interval will see two days with thunderstorms and two or three days with rain.

CLOUD COVER PROBABILITIES (source 2)
---------------------------------------------
In late July and early August the skies are clear or mostly clear about 66% of the time. This probably understates the likelihood of favorable conditions at night, when clouds are less common.

Sources:
(1) http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/daily/USNE0494?climoMonth=7
(2) http://weatherspark.com/averages/31908/Valentine-Nebraska-United-States

Numerous attendees have reported that the thunderstorms can be strong. I usually take down my scopes at night but leave the mount up so that my polar alignment is retained. I might consider looking into how to stake down the mount so that really strong gusts don't topple it.

As for the heat, it could easily top what I experienced at the Iowa star party last year. The Solution is a lot of water, and either bring or borrow shade.

Whining about the Weather

Ah, Minnesota in Winter. Some things that make observing during Winter special:

• Looking through an eyepiece only to have your eye begin to tear. That water sloshing around on your eye hardly helps you see clearly.  Usually it leads to frost on the eyepiece lens, and sometimes the joy of having a drop fall onto your eyepiece lens and freeze solid. Heaven help you if your eye bumps into an eyepiece that's at a temperature of -6° F.
• Snow amplifies sky brighness. Even dark-sky friendly lights can turn against you when their light bounces upward off the white stuff.
• Cold fingers. Which are marginally better than fingers coated with plastic-dissolving DEET needed to fend off mosquitoes.
• Cold feet. They say that the way to keep the extremeties warm is to keep the torso toasty. There's a limit to how many layers one can wear and still have use of one's arms and legs.
• Stiff mounts. The pasty goop that's used to lubricate most mounts can get very grippy in the cold, making drive motors labor duing slews. And they can get noisy too. I had a mount that whined when the temperature fell below zero. (Much like myself.)
• Feeble hand control displays. Some of these can become almost useless as the cold increases the display latency.
• Dead batteries.  Most batteries don't like being used in very cold temperatures, and give up the ghost far sooner than you might expect.
• Deep snow. Planting a tripod or work table in the deep snow can be difficult.
• The neighbors' backyard lit Christmas decorations. Not to wax humbuggy, but really, twinking lights seem much less festive when you're trying to hunt down something that's at the limits of your telescope and observing skills, your eyes are full of tears, your fingers are stiff with cold and the mount is screeching in your ears.  Just keep telling yourself, "Astronomy is a fun hobby."

So what to do, curl up next to the furnace until March?  Aside from earning the derision of the good folks up in Canada, sitting indoors will make you miss the splendor of the Winter sky. Get yourself some hand warmers for your hands and the hand controller. Get some really good winter wear. It's OK if you look like an escaped balloon from a Thanksgiving day parade so long as you're warm. Regrease your mount.

DO NOT use your .22 rifle to shoot out the neighbors' lights. That's both illegal and ineffective, as anyone who has ever watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas knows. (The cartoon version, of course.)

Best advice: Move someplace else. The worst thing about winter in Minnesota isn't the cold, it's the clouds. Take a look at this from the excellent web site ClimateStations.com:

This shows the percent of time the sky isn't clear enough for looking through anything better than "sucker holes," breaks in the clouds that optimists take as a sign that the sky is clearing.  During those long winter nights we generally spend more than half our time under cloud cover. What fun!

OK, enough whining.  The next clear night I'll be in the back yard humming something from the Grinch. Why just humming? Because my face will be frozen.