The Furnace Creek Resort Area

LVAS Members and Guests returned to Death Valley in January to enjoy the dark skies at one of our favorite sites. We had guests join us from Michigan, California, and Oregon. The weather didn't cooperate Friday night - clouds prevented us from even setting up. John Heller and I met a few Park visitors at 8pm, but could only point out a few stars and Orion as it burned through the clouds. We could only hope for better skies on Saturday night.

In Front of General Store

Talking with Visitors at the General Store while waiting for the clouds to depart

We set up at the General Store on Saturday hoping for some Sun to try out our new Lunt Solar Scope. Clouds prevented any solar observing until about 12:30, but we passed out a lot of NASA handouts on the Sun and talked with folks about various astronomical topics. The Clear Sky Clock predicted a 13 hour window of clear skies beginning about 1:00pm and at 12:30, the clouds began to part and the sky opened up. Our new solar scope got its first light and Cindy Heller got to use her TelevVue 127 to observe the Sun for the first time. We able to observe Sun the for about 3 hours with these two scopes and David Blanchette's 80mm before we tore down to set up for the evening star party. See solar viewing pics below.

Our Three Solar Scopes Helping Visitors see the Sunspots

The weather Saturday night was great and we had over 100 visitors to observe through our scopes and observe the images of three Mallincams. Stan Watson, a Mallincam buddy from Michigan, joined us for the weekend. Dan Duriscoe, one of the Park Rangers, set up one of the Park's CPC 11s and spent the evening with us. After the crowd departed, several of us stay a few more hours for some personal observing. Some of us tackled the January Observer's Challenge and saw the Cone Nebula for the first time through our scopes. 

Beginning to Set Up

Setting up at the Airport

Overall, it was a good weekend despite the loss on Friday night.