Lockwood
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Return of the NVT (again) and setting up As I write this, I've been very busy and have not managed to make enough time to write this article. As a result, my memories of the 2025 Okie-Tex Star Party have faded quite a bit, but luckily I managed to take some notes and I have photos to also jog my memory. For those that read these, I apologize for my lateness as I write this in March of 2026 while on a short trip. This article will therefore be more photo-heavy and less text heavy and most that have come before, which will be popular with some. As always, my destination was Kenton, OK, as seen below, which is just a mile from the star party.  As with most Okie-Tex Star Parties, I headed west early on a Thursday morning and stopped in central Kansas, in this case the town of Pratt, for the night. This leaves a fairly short drive of about four or five hours on Friday, which means I can sleep in a bit and still arrive at the site in the early to mid-afternoon with plenty of time to set up telescopes, get moved into my accommodations, and have dinner with friends.  The 2025 weather forecast was not nearly as favorable as the 2024 Okie-Tex event, which featured seven or eight clear nights in a row, but we know how to make the best of it when this happens. A calendar of events seems to materialize as people plan out their observing or imaging schedule based on the best guess at the weather forecast, and it seems to fill up. As a result, the star party week usually just seem to fly by for me. This year Kara got a bit bored since the entertainment options are a bit limited in the greater Kenton, OK metropolitan area, but we made the best of it. Below is our setup for the week, Kara's scope on the right on its tracking platform, John's JPAstrocraft 22" f/3.3 on the left, and my 12.5" NVT nestled between (on its third trip to Okie-Tex), with a clear southern horizon so I could scrape the ridge and catch nebula as they set over the ridge to the southwest.  While we set up our telescopes - my 12.5" f/2 nightvision telescope (NVT) and Kara's 18" f/4.5 - we caught up with friends and planned the dinner schedule. A number of us bring food to share for our meals, and this makes for healthy options for those that require or prefer that and a nicely varied menu. Our smaller group mixes with larger groups on other nights for certain events that have become an annual event/gathering, like bloody Mary kabobs for a late star party breakfast (really!), sushi in the afternoon, and pork butt for dinner. Below, Kara works on planning the night's observing.  The observing field filled in quite nicely, with over 500 attendees registered. This is a large, well-run event at an excellent observing site. Below, Don sets up his imaging rigs just down the road from our little area, sheltered from the wind by tarps that are not yet up. He's helping run TSP in 2026, which Kara and I will be attending.  Not quite optimal weather Friday night was not completely clear, and having driven quite a ways and without ideal skies, we decided to socialize mostly with a few beverages and turn in a bit early to rest up for later nights. The annual ritual of catching up with old friends over a beverage under a dark (but in this case not clear) sky is always a wonderful feeling. For me, unless I'm looking for some particular, fleeting, or specific event or object, I enjoy observing more when others are around, so star parties are a particular highlight of my schedule. On Saturday morning we walked over from where we were staying in Kenton to the star party site for a late light breakfast. The sky continued to be partly cloudy and the day was warm. Later in the day, big storms moved in and we ended up moving our small beer tasting into John and Cindy's RV for a while after dinner. The storms claimed a few tents as victims and may have tipped a telescope over. We did not quite save Rex's shade canopy as the storm winds hit, but we all tried very hard to and then retreated into the RV to wait it out. When the storms had finally moved through, Kara and I called it a night early because the forecast for Sunday night was for some clear skies, at least for a while. Sunday dawned clear, and I tweaked my talk a bit to pass the time during the day. In the evening I helped a nearby observer fix an improperly mounted secondary that I believe had shifted during transportation and that I believe was in danger of falling out, but my memory may be faulty on exactly what was wrong. It's been a while so I don't recall the exact issue, but we got it squared away before dark, and that observer later ordered a mirror and should have a new telescope later this year.  Sunday night we observed all that we could due to clouds that were expected for the next night or two. There was some pretty serious green skyglow that nearly covered the sky. It left my nightvision telescope mostly unaffected because it operated on longer wavelengths, and I showed various people the showpiece H-alpha objects all over the sky. Galaxies were notably washed out even with the IR-cut filter that usually helped. Clouds moved in around midnight and we turned in. The photos above and below show the skyglow in different directions. We made the best of it, at least we got to observe!  Monday was a cloudy, and the forecast called for clouds and possibly rain over the next couple of days. This led me to schedule a full-on beer tasting for that afternoon, and we invited everyone we could think of and had a large crowd in the "corral" that John and Cindy set up for their dogs. Here's the illustrious group after it was fully assembled and some libations had been enjoyed. We had a large variety of beers to choose from as usual, brought by those from many different states.   A great time was had, some went to dinner and returned, and Kara and I returned to LeRoss' place to watch some Monday night football and learn some of the finer points about rodeo from LeRoss, who is an expert on that subject. Tuesday dawned as a beautiful day with deep blue skies that increasingly filled with puffy white clouds as the day went on. I did my very long talk that afternoon about mirror making and how I got started in mirror making, complete with a video of the very first time I started grinding a mirror, as taken by my dad. I didn't realize that existed until he gave me a DVD of 45 minutes of my annoyed teen-age self trying to describe what I was doing as I figured it out and my dad asked me questions. This talk took up two one-hour talk slots with a break in the middle and questions at the end of both parts. After that we prepared dinner and eventually Kara and I again ended up back at LeRoss' for some TV and an early bedtime. Rain set in and lasted most of the night, but ended by the next morning as things started to clear up and dry up. Sushi and more clear skies Wednesday featured improving weather, and the major event of the afternoon as the Wideman's now-famous sushi extravaganza. For those inclined, a sake tasting happens concurrently, but since we had missed two nights most of us were going light on beverages in expectation of staying up as late as we could later on.  Dinner was light after the mid-afternoon feast of salmon and crab rolls, and then we had a light dinner and headed to the first of two prize giveaways (images below), which are held on Wednesday and Friday. Kara was lucky enough to win something, and then we observed quite late into the night on a breezy night with some skyglow showing in the north for most of the evening, masquerading as false northern lights. Either on this night or the next we finished off an extra sushi roll that had been leftover from the sushi-fest. That's always a great midnight snack!  Above is the outdoor crowd listening to the door prize drawing, below is the indoor crowd. There are always a lot of prizes, so odds can be quite good, especially on Friday after a number of people have left the star party to head home or off to another destination for the weekend.  Finally we were getting some good skies and observing in after being spoiled the year before! The sky shown below is what we usually expect from this site.  Thursday dawned as a beautiful day, and as it turned out, it was Dean's "bloody Mary morning" - but not in the negative way like the Willie Nelson song (called Bloody Mary Morning). He made amazing bloody Marys with huge kebabs of shrimp, olives, cheese, sliced sausage, and small peppers and onions. I'm not a fan of tomato juice, so instead I was handed a couple of kebobs - see image below.  It made for a very filling morning, which was followed by a pork butt dinner prepared by another attendee. To further improve a great day, the sky was even better on Thursday night than Wednesday, and winds were lighter. We made the most and persevered until 3am or so before crashing after a superb night of observing. I shared a nightvision monocular with Rex as we watched Starlink satellites appear on the northwest horizon going *two* different directions and then become much dimmer or disappear. It was a very strange sight until we figured out what was going on, because at first it appeared as though they were changing directions! Other meals during the week included Kara's teriyaki chicken thighs and ground turkey chili and John and Cindy's pork tenderloin with a glaze of cajun blackening and maple syrup, salmon pasta, and smoked chicken for lunch sandwiches. We do like to eat well but also healthy. We were up to two and a half nights of observing for the week, quite a bit under the average, but the food was above average. Again, the seven or eight clear nights the previous year had spoiled us and we should have known we were going to have to face the odds at some point. Friday was the day to pack up and wind down. After the packing up part was done, we had a beer tasting, pulled pork for dinner, root beer "floats" provided by someone, and then we attended the second door prize drawing. The odds were better because a number of people had already left, and some friends won some nice prizes. We finished off the evening visiting with friends before getting to sleep at a reasonable hour in preparation for driving the next day. Kara and I both headed west at a reasonable hour on Saturday morning before she headed north and back to Idaho and I ended up in Los Alamos for a couple of days of visiting and a little sightseeing. I helped friends move a few larger items into their new house to help make it liveable, and got to see a cloudy but very dark sky overhead before I got up very early to head back to Kenton to pick up some local cuts of beef and then head home to get back to work. Rather than heading south to I-25 again, I took the scenic route north of Los Alamos up into the mountains to the east through Taos, Angel Fire, and Eagles Nest, NM, and then down the Cimarron River valley on the other side through Cimarron Canyon State Park. It was a beautiful drive, and I stopped here and there to get a photo or two.  Above photo is from Eagles Nest, NM, a small town at ~8,200 feet altitude with a beautiful lake. Below are two images from the Cimarron River valley on the east side of the mountains, descending toward the plains and I-25.   Stop made, I headed east on the state roads to Wichita, KS. After a night there I made it home the next day and emptied the car. I am looking forward to Okie-Tex 2026 with a hopefully larger nightvision telescope (more on that soon, I hope) and even more clear nights and fun activities. Clear skies, good seeing, and good beers to everyone. -Mike Lockwood, -Lockwood Custom Optics, Inc. |