Oregon Star Party
August 28-31 2003
Indian Trail Springs, Ochoco National Forest
950 amateur astronomers
and their families
attended this year, a new record!
Click on images for full size
picture
The Oregon Star Party was first held in 1988 in the far south eastern
corner of Oregon in the Steens Mountains. The OSP was relocated to the
Indian Trail Springs location in 1991. On Wednesday the 27th I drove up to
OSP following behind Dean Kelly. We had a long drive as we had to take a
detour around the forest fires near Sisters & Mt Jefferson.
Driving up to OSP on 8/27/03 Dean Kelly & I stopped to take
pictures of the forest fire burning near Santiam Junction Highway 22/20 We
had to detour around the fire to reach the OSP site.
Another picture of the fire. The fire was burning within a half mile
of the Highway 22/20 Junction. As of 8/31/03 the fires (Booth & Bear
Butte) has burned 49,130 acres, and is 40% contained.
ODOT facility near Santiam Junction. The Forest Service was
back-burning near Hoo-Doo Ski Resort just a few miles west of this area.
(They did save the ski resort!)
View looking NW towards Portland, from my tent!
First night at OSP 8/27/03. There were already several hundred people
set up !
My 10" Dob "Earl II" ready for a night of viewing! The
sunsets were spectacular due to the forest fires burning near Sisters
& Mt Jefferson wilderness area.
Viewing at OSP this year was fantastic, in spite of the forest fires. On
the first night 8/27/03 everyone enjoyed spectacular views of Mars. Using
Dean Kelly's 8" scope & my 10" scope we enjoyed a wonderful
first night at OSP. The seeing was so good that images of Mars through the
eyepiece looked like a picture! The detail of the surface features of Mars
was amazing! I was able to add a number of Messier objects to my observing
log during the OSP!
Each year at the Oregon Star Party a "Walk-about", is held. Mel
Bartels leads the activity having selected several telescopes to show to
the OSP crowd. Each owner of the telescope describes the features and the
processes in building their telescopes. This year 7 telescopes were chosen
for the walk-about.
This was the first telescope featured in the walk-about. This is Joe
Rothman's "The Week Scope", it took him a week to build it
before the OSP!
Another view of the scope.
Chuck Dethloff (OSP President & Founder) talks about his wife Judy's'
16" telescope that was one of the telescopes featured in the
Walk-about.
Chuck explains the front mounted fan features.
Bruce Sayers 22" Newtonian reflector binoculars!
Mirrors are from Swayze optics.
