Marfa Lights Star Party

AlpineTrip2009_day3 171, originally uploaded by MPR Photography (Matthew2000tx).

Thursday:

Today we slept late and then drove out to Marfa and poked around. After taking some photos of the local buildings we started to Geocache. Eventually we drove back to Alpine and got some lunch then headed out southeast on Highway 118 and grabbed some geocaches. Some of them we got in the rain and some required some rock climbing.. It was fun and slightly dangerous we encountered a javelina out in the wild while geocaching.
Later we drove back to Alpine then grabbed dinner at the Longhorn Steakhouse in celebration of our wedding anniversary. After dinner we drove out to the Marfa Lights Viewing area and set up our 16” Lightbridge. There were some clouds be we were hopeful that they would clear and they did. We got a chance to show about 65 people various objects in the night sky including M57, M4, M80, Jupiter, and more.
One fun moment was when I used my green laser pointer to show a constellation and everyone on the viewing area flipped out… you could hear “What was that… Look it is a green UFO…The mother Ship is coming!!” I had to contain my laughter and compose myself. I then went and invited people to come take a look though my telescope.