Astro 28K - Field Astronomy at Carrizo Plain - Mar 23-25, 2012

Post Trip Highlights

What an adventure! Physically, intellectually, spiritually, it was a memorable trip. It began with some sturm und drang about whether we should postpone the trip for one week. 20 hrs of phone calls and emails and weather updates from Weather Underground, weather.com, and NOAA the day before the trip, and it was clear that we'd lose a half dozen students if we postponed. So it was game on, come what may. The forecast was initially for 60% chance of rain by mid morning Saturday, but by the time we left, the storm had slowed down and the forecast was for 30% chance of rain, not arriving till midnight Saturday. Since our educational plans were mostly by car on Sunday, this was OK, with the significant caveat that we'd have to perhaps deal with rain on Sunday during break-camp.

The weather did cause a few cancellations at the last minute, but we had a good team and everyone was good to go for camping in the wilderness, sans campground, and taking advantage of the clean dark skies of Carrizo.

It'll take some time before I can get to posting all the photos. Deadlines loom, so be patient....

Meanwhile, you can look at many of them, untitled, on astronomy club volunteer Kirk's flickr page.