We started the day (which happened to be our 17th wedding anniversary) in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and we arrived in Memphis about 4 pm. We really wanted to get some authentic Memphis BBQ, so we went a little out if our way to go to Marlowe’s, which is just down the street from Graceland (which was closed, alas).
Amy got a half rack of ribs and I got the pulled pork. Amy also indulged the Southern girl in her, and got turnip greens and fried okra as sides for her ribs. She raved about the turnip greens, but that must be a Southern thing.
Both the ribs and the pork were good, with a nice smoky flavor, and the meat was very tender. But I’m not sure it was the best BBQ I’ve ever had, merely quite good.
We got everything packed up Saturday morning and hit the road at noon exactly. The trip meter read exactly 2000 miles.
We stopped in Balmorhea for lunch at the Cave of the Bear (La Cueva de Oso) Mexican restaurant. The service was extremely slow as there was just one waitress and about 8-9 tables, but the food was really good, and worth the wait.
From there, we took 17 North and picked up I-20 towards Dallas. We’re going to get East of Dallas at least, and possibly all the way to Little Rock tonight.
Thursday night was a complete washout, but at least Friday night I won a $25 gift certificate for ScopeStuff.
The observing Friday night was just as frustrating as last night, though at least there was about an hour when it was clear enough in a few areas of sky to be able to observe. Most everything looked crappy because of the haze and smoke from the nearby fire, but I did get a chance to visually observe the supernova in M51, so that was cool. It was a lot fainter than I expected, and if it had not been for an image of it on the Sky and Telescope website, I would have thought I had observed it when I hadn’t.
Otherwise, the night was a complete washout, so I broke everything down and put it under a tarp for packing in the car tomorrow. I was back in my bunk by 1 am, feeling quite depressed that I drove two and a half days to get decent observing two nights out of six.
One of the cool things about big regional star parties is that you get to see lots of cool scopes. TSP is known, in particular, for the big dobs that show up. The largest is Larry Mitchell’s 36″ Obsession (apparently one of only four ever made), but there’s at least one 30″, and several 25″ Obsessions, a 22″ Obsession Ultracompact, and a whole slew of 20 inchers. In fact, it’s quite nice to be at a star party where my 18″ is quite ho-hum – it means no one is interested in looking through my scope, and I can spend the whole time concentrating on what I want to observe. Don’t get me wrong, I like doing outreach and sharing views, but sometimes, when you’re under pristine skies, I just want to observe.
By far, however, the coolest scope on the field has to be the 24″ binocular Newtonian designed and built by Derek Newton. I have owned a matched pair of 12.5″ mirrors for several years and have wanted to build a bi-newt, so I have a great deal of interest in this scope. I’ll have to upload pics after I get a better Internet connection, but to say this scope is impressive is an understatement. With the lousy observing conditions last night, by the time I got over to his scope to take a peek, it was already covered up. The weather forecast for tonight is looking much better, so maybe I’ll have a chance tonight.
A very frustrating night! Transparency was poor, with clouds hovering around the horizon in almost all directions. Anything below about 15 degrees was in muck. Omega Centauri was disappointing as a result, and it was almost 1 am before the Saggitarius-scorpius region was high enough to look good.
On the flip side, seeing was awesome early in the evening, so Saturn was as steady as I’ve ever seen it. I had a hard time putting enough power on it – every eyepiece I have kept looking great. The 10mm Pentax looked like a photo, then the 7mm Nagler, then the 10mm with a 2x barlow I finally borrowed someone’s 3.7mm Ethos (that’s 561x in my scope!), and still the image was clear and crisp. I was almost tempted to try a powermate with the 3.7 Ethos, seeing was that good.
Unfortunately that was the highlight of the evening. The poor transparency made observing faint fuzzies very difficult even in large scopes, and clouds started to really encroach around 1:30, and we were completely socked in by 2 am. I have to admit I was extremely grumpy at the time, because we’ve only had two decent nights out of four, which is typical for Mid-Atlantic star parties, but TSP supposed to be this always clear Mecca of amateur astronomy. I kinda felt like I didn’t need to drive 1,800 miles for this level of frustration, I can get this at home! 
