All-Star Telescope Star Party, 2015

With 30 guests All-Star Telescope hosted another successful astronomy retreat at the Painted Pony Resort.  This marks their 7th visit over the past 5 years for a week of astrophotography in the high desert of southern New Mexico.  At night, the hanger becomes the congregating point for the astronomers while others enjoy the hot tub and courtyard area at the main house for other activities.  This year 2 daytime hikes were completed for a total of 11 miles, one hike up south fork canyon for some afternoon birding and a second hike across the high desert to the outcrops at the base of the Peloncillo mountains.  Dalton Wilson brought his drone and took some magnificent images of the estate and high desert, see below, showing 14 telescopes setup by the hanger.  The area around the hanger is ideal for astronomy since the main house, guest house, and bungalow are over 500' away and with minimal outdoor lighting does not interfere with astronomy activities.  At night only red lights, to preserve the astronomers night vision, can be seen moving around the telescopes in the New Mexican desert as they concentrate on capturing the perfect image of astronomical objects in the southern sky visible from the estate.  With dinners catered by Jackie Lewis of the George Walker house the guests reported having a wonderful time at this years star party and were discussing returning again next year.

Aerial view of 14 telescopes set up at the All-Star Telescope New Mexico star party.  Photograph by Dalton Wilson.

A view down the road in South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon with guests out for some birding.

The Night Sky at the Painted Pony Resort

As previously noted (here and here) a group of astronomers from Canada spent a week at the Painted Pony Resort taking advantage of the clear, light free night skies in the San Simon valley.  After looking at the photographs that were captured during the week long star party, especially this one by John McDonald, it was clear that some new images of PPR were necessary to highlight the night skies here in the valley.  Not being an astro-photographer and only owning a camera from Walmart it seemed impossible to create anything close to John's work.  But after a couple of months of work the first results are finally in.  It required reprogramming the camera and a number of failed attempts before anything useful was produced.  Below are 2 examples of merged images using photographs taken on the property.  These images are not a true reflection of reality since they each are composed of two images.  It was not possible to capture both the night sky and the facility with the same exposure so 2 images were merged.  The night sky was photographed at f2.8, 15 second exposure, with an ISO 1600 using a Canon Power Shot SX110 equipped with CHDK.  The images were processed in GIMP and merged using the same software.

Painted Pony Resort

Main house at night

The next task is to create the video of the night sky rotating over the Painted Pony Resort.