Our next Star Party at Sierra La Rana will be April 26, 2014. This will be another Rock/Star Party with Paul Greybeal from the Marfa Rock Shop (Moonlight Gemstones) giving a talk starting about 8pm on the geology of Sierra La Rana and if you have any rocks you have gathered and want to know what they are…bring ‘em. After that about 9pm Dave Oesper and the Big Bend Astronomy club will set up a few telescopes and they always share and help with finding some interesting sights. This Rock Star Party is for Sierra La Rana Owners and Guests but a few may attend as Dave Dumas’ guest with prior notification by contacting Dave Directly at 1-866-757-2382 or dave@sierralarana.com . This isn’t just for telescope viewing you will be surprised at what you can see with just a pair of binoculars and at one of our star parties several people worked on time-lapse photography and this Milky Way photo was taken with a 20 second exposure which seemed to be the best. The big talk one night was about what looked like a whitish haze on the western horizon and most of us thought it was just residual light from the sunset. Come to find out occasionally you can see ‘Comet’ dust. It was amazing to see. All throughout the night Dave Oesper and some of the other members of the Astronomy Club use a laser pointer and show us different star systems, satellites that are flying by and an occasional comet zips by.
