One of the first things you do when you get to Barcroft is to check your blood oxygen levels.
The picture shows 86% which is low. But it actually jumped back to 89%-90% a few seconds later. At 12,500 ft, I was over two miles up from sea level. And I felt a little light-headed for a couple of hours. I deliberately took my time to setup my equipment and I became winded when I had to lift my 3 deep-cycle batteries. Otherwise I felt okay. No nausea, no tingling in my fingers or toes,
and only occasional headaches at night. (Click to enlarge the photo.)
The site is dominated by the main quonset hut building which was lined with solar panels. This larger building is where we ate, slept, showered, and hung-out. Smaller, partly delapidated buildings littered the area. I was a little sad to learn these other buildings were basically abandoned structures from prior university-funded projects. I guess the budgets never included any provision for taking down the structures or for handing off the equipment to other researchers. Something is wrong with how university-funded projects are handled after their original research ends. It reminded me of how the Hubble Telescope, a very capable and still-functioning instrument, will simply burn up in the atmosphere when its funding expires.
On the right side you can see the area where the telescopes were setup.
Here is a shot straight down "Telescope Row" with Mark's 20 inch Teeter in the foreground.
The other side of "Telescope Row" featuring Andrew's 24 inch dob.
You know things were getting serious when we had to sign a waiver upon arrival.
One of the more important areas in the facility was the kitchen.
We spent a large chunk of time in the dining room. I suppose it was the tables and the proximity to the WIFI that drew us together. I didn't get any pictures of the upstairs area, but there were comfy couches in a TV room in addition to the pool and ping-pong tables.
Dinners were served buffet style every night. One night we had a vegetarian-esque dinner of pasta.
I never slept well while I was there. In an effort to keep the area dark, a resourceful gentleman had put aluminum foil over the window. But I found that the foil would "breathe", moving in and out, during the night and that would create an annoying racket. I did partially get used to it, but I would get startled awake every morning by the sound. I typically got 3-4 hours of sleep. A couple of afternoons I took a nap which helped immensely. (Note to self: Bring earplugs.)
Luckily, there were enough bunks so that you could use the top bunk as a staging area for your equipment or your personal gear. There were bunks upstairs so that if the star party hit max capacity, I think everyone could still use the top bunks as a storage/staging area.
During the week, I found time to do two hikes. On one hike I simply followed the trail to see an abandoned observatory that was maybe 1/3 mile away from the research facility.
On the second hike, I went with a couple guys and climbed Mt Barstow which is just above the facility. It required that we go off trail and forge our own path. There were tons of marmots and it was annoying navigating their droppings.
White Mountain Peak from Mt Barcroft.
What about the nights? I stayed 5 nights at Barcroft and we had 2 good nights, 2 okay nights and 1 awful night. There were fires to the west and to the northwest which seems typical for California. On some nights, you could smell the smoke in the air. I was able to collect decent data on M16 and NGC 7293 on about 3 nights. There was always something interesting to see in the scopes that were there.
I had 4 observing highlights on this trip. The first was spotting the globular cluster, G2 (Mayall III) in M31 with Vijay in his 15 inch scope. (I had previously only seen it with my old 18" Obsession.) The second was finally seeing Einstein's Cross through the 24in dob. It took awhile to hunt it down and initially I misidentified a faint mag 14 star for it. We also had a quick view of the Draco Dwarf which was mostly impressive due to how easy it was to find. And last, while it wasn't a successful observation, I enjoyed looking for Pease 1 in M15. It was NOT a "pease a cake". :( (We were trying for Pease 1 in a 18 inch Obsession that had questionable collimation.)
I can't say with absolute assurance that I could see all the constituent parts of Einstein's Cross. I could make out 3 constituents with a fourth one occasionally popping into view. The reason I'm not certain is that the star that I originally mistook for Einstein's Cross appeared to break apart into smaller point sources. The 'star' I'm referring to is the top of the "Reverse 'L'" in the image below.
I think mag 15+ stars can fool you into thinking they are something else. But after a second stare at the Cross, I realized it first appears as a tiny globular cluster with a bit of haze that would occasionally resolve into an imperfect triangle/cross.
In any event, I took a short 2 minute exposure of Einstein's Cross with my Canon T3i through the Tak 102 and I'm including the shot with some notes for anyone desperately needing another reference image whilst hunting it down. It's a large JPG so it may take a minute to appear on slower connections.
The trip was a lot of fun. The dark, transparent skies beg for big dobs and "bucket list" objects to observe. My darkest SQM reading was 21.8. Which makes it comparable to Grandview. But I only have a sample of 5 nights. I'd be willing to bet they get SQM 22+ nights up there.
Astrophotos from the trip are in progress, but I'll need a month (or a year) before I get them up on the blog.
[Click to go back to Part 1]
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