Saturday, we went to load up the chairs, ice chest, tripod and other stuff from our *spot*. Then we looked around the Vendor area. Found some really cool flashlights. Max purchased one that has the white, green and red lights. I love it and have claimed it as mine. He knew this when he purchased it, but we share it.
Pictures of the Upper Field Saturday afternoon, a lot of people had already left.
Went back to the cabin for awhile. Then headed back in time to hear the last Speaker of the year; Terence Dickinson.
Terence Dickinson, a leading amateur astromoner and science writer from Yarker, Ontario, Canada. He is the editor of SkyNews magazine (which my sister and her family gave Max a subscription to for his Birthday this past March) and an astronomy commentator for Discovery Channel Canada.
More than one million copies of his 14 books are in print in five languages. His best-known book, NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe, is widely regarded as the essential guidebook for beginning stargazers. NightWatch, first published in 1983, now has over 600,000 copies in print, making it the top-selling stargazing guide in the world during the past 20 years. Each new edition has outsold the previous one because of extensive revisions and the addition of new material.
He spoke mostly about his recent trip to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. It is the driest place on Earth--so dry that parts of it have received no recorded rainfall for decades. Research professionals staked out the place as astronomical nirvana on Earth back in the 1960s when a few observatories built at the southern end of the Atacama revealed remarkably clear and steady air night after night. More 0bservatories were constructed, and in 1998 the biggest of them all was completed on Cerro Paranal, in the middle of the Atacama at 8,600 feet above sea level. Known somewhat prosaically as the VLT (Very Large Telescope), the facility boasts four 8.2-metre telescopes as well as several smaller ones.
Max and I have discussed volunteering for the next year's Texas Star Party. If we attend. This way we will meet more people and think it will be more fun. Don't mean to imply we didn't enjoy this year, we did. :-)