Greetings from West Texas. I'm with most of the astronomy class on our annual (because we did it once already last year) field trip to the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. It's quite a drive. And the observatory is still another 45 minutes. Summary so far: We've got 2 vans this year (just one last year). Mr. Flores was nice enough to let me have the better one. He says he's used to the older one. Despite leaving 15 minutes later than planned, an unscheduled stop at Starbucks (Mr. Flores needs his caffeine), snack stop, and lunch stop, we still got to the hotel around when I thought we would: 3:30. Getting in that early allowed time to climb Hancock Hill which overlooks Alpine. The famous desk Just living my best life. As you can see, there were clouds. It's supposed to be overcast on Day 2, so I was worried that we wouldn't see any stars this trip. However, when we went to the Marfa Lights viewing area, the clouds opened up just enough to get a glimpse at ...
Blog started at my students' urging. Many different things will be talked about here.