Mcdonald Observatory!

Happy Passover to all my Jewish friends. I hope you had a great first night celebration with your families and friends.

The past two days adventures have been focused activity that is really out of this world!

Friday after we arrived at Prude Ranch, a horse ranch, RV and cabin park just north of Fort Davis' main center on RT 118, we headed up to the real site of our interest and tourist draw in this location. For us, not only are the roads up to and all around Fort Davis on our list of the top scenic roads to drive in America but RT 118 also leads up to the place with literally, the darkest sky in Texas and the contiguous 48 states. It is also the highest mountain top in Texas accessible by paved road at 6700 feet above sea level.

With all that going for it, it seems that those characteristics make it also the most spectacular place for an observatory. Mcdonald Observatory, as built and designed over many years, as an extension of the University of Texas and visited and utilized by astronomical scientist, studying all varieties of celestial phenomenon. It is a renowned location for scientific research and is an outstanding place to visit and learn even more than you might think you know about the day and night sky that surrounds us.

On Friday we attended a twilight presentation at 7:30 that was the introductory portion of the entire evening aptly named "The Star Party". At twilight we learned about particular astronomical features that we would be able to see later in the evening through 6 different telescopes and view apparatus ranging in size and power intensity.

After the sunset, at 9 PM, we all headed outside to an amphitheater, and joined in (at least Jasper and I did) a skit (model) presentation that was intended to teach us about the relationships between the sun and the earth, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter (me) and their respective distances from the earth and their revolutions related to each other and the sun. Then we put the constellations (Jasper was Capricorn) all around us in the approximate positions in the sky. All of this was while it was still somewhat light and we were waiting for that huge night sky to darken around us.

As the sky grew darker the presentation moved into an visual illustration of the constellations using a high powered laser light to point out all of the major bright stars and the their positions in the constellations. All of this was very easily understood by us amateurs as they used the presenter used the big dipper to get us to the current north star, Polaris and then brought us 360 degrees around the sky pointing out each visible constellation. Maybe not the very most fun you can have sitting out top of a mountain in the dark but certainly one of the most exciting and informative learning experiences I have had in that environment.

By the end of this portion of the presentation, other presenters had already been busy setting up and aligning the various telescopes on the specific items we would be viewing. This was the high light of the program. We were able to view the planet Saturn, its rings and a few of its moons through a 12" telescope and it was just awesome to view. We also saw various age star clusters. Some just forming and some dying and some in such massive clusters that they appear as a cotton ball at the center. We saw M3 - a globular cluster of stars containing approx. 1/2 million stars that are about 33,900 light years away (1 light year is 5.8 trillion miles, you do the math) that shines with a brightness of 300 times that of the sun. This cluster is so large and bright that it can actually been seen by the naked eye under the right conditions and assuming we actually knew where to look. We also saw M35 (open star cluster only 100 light years away and can be seen by the naked eye and with binoculars-off the foot of Gemini. We saw this through two different powers of binoc's), Pleidies (the seven sisters) and the spectacularly beautiful new set of stars forming called Orion Nebula (see the picture to the right)

We also got two different views of our moon. Did you know that the moon is drifting away from us? It is, at the rate of about 1/2" per year. And I thought my night vision was just getting worse. Whew!

I enjoyed Saturn, Orion and M3 the most. Brilliant!.

Saturday we returned for the Daylight presentation that involved learning quite a bit about the sun and the tours of the the largest telescope on the property - 107" mirror (108" is 9 ') and the newest and largest in the US spectography telescope. All this and being on top of the mountains left us felling very..... tired, I mean enlightened in a celestial sense.

The presentation is very professional, with indepth detail and funny.

The guys presenting make it work and very accessible to all.

The Observatory complex is a city unto it self. It has a director who also acts as Mayor. There is housing for all of the professional staff, a school, medical facility and so on all self inclusive. Quite a remarkable operation and a real pleasure to visit and partake.

This first one From the bottom one up just above and to the right is the 107" telescope from the top floor, inside the observation building some 50 additional feet off the ground. The next one up is the newest spectograph scope.

Check out the radio telescope at the bottom of the pictures. Click on the sign describing it, to enlarge it and read what it has to say. This is wild to me!