Gee whiz, I thought I’d posted a comment here yesterday. Damn. Getting old truly sucks.

Last week Mrs B and I took a trip to MacDonald Observatory (near Fort Davis, TX). MacDonald has regularly scheduled tours and other events. The website requires sign-up and pay up front. We signed up for a day tour, twilight lecture and Star Party.

The tour was a total astronomy geek-out. The guide was erudite, knowledgeable and responsive. Mrs and I enjoyed it a lot more than we anticipated. Our tour group was maybe 30 people which to me was to large. OTOH, it probably help him to have a large group because several in our group (including me!) wanted to ask follow up questions.

The twilight talk was held in the amphitheater and given buy a different man who also had a gift for group speaking on technical topics. Temps dropped 20 degrees quickly so we were glad we brought sweaters and windbreakers.

Oh yeah, I was expecting maybe 30-40 people, Max. I mean, we were in a desert on a mountain hundreds of miles from any significant population. How crowded could get?

There were probably 500 souls.

To me, that was a group too large for the number of telescopes and time allotted. It resulted in long lines and quick looks. Totally off-putting. Again, we were there to learn about the technology of the various kinds of scopes and the science of what we were seeing. Of well.

The next few days w stayed at the Chisos Mountains Lodge in Big Bend NP. You enter a dimensional time warp to get to the lodge. It’s a “modern” 1960’s motel complex stuffed haphazardly into a stunningly beautiful landscape. It is a terrible shame to jam such ill-conceived and poorly executed architecture into such a lovely setting.

We did have on night that was so cloud and haze free that it seemed as though we had no atmosphere. In Louisianawe have an atmosphere like looking through motor oil. We took the 6” dob out in the desert and got excellent views of Jupiter early in the evening twilight and then Saturn, transiting through Sagittarius. Could clearly see the Cassini division, which is very hit or miss back home. And Titan and a barely visible tiny moon farther out. Maybe Enceladus? Then we stepped through several Messiers before calling it a night.

In summary, MacDonald was worth a tour but not the Star Party. Chisos Miuntains were wonderful. I’d like to take a 2-3 day geology tour of Big Bend NP.