A Singular Event

I was the only attendee for an impromptu star party at Alpha Ridge on December 20.  Temperatures were in the mid 30s, winds were calm and the sky was mostly clear, although some clouds moved through in the 7:00 hour.

I set up my Vespera EAA scope to image the Flaming Star and Tadpole Nebulae in Auriga and made some visual observations with my 8″ Celestron Starsense Explorer Dob.  I found a little dipper-shaped asterism of stars in Pisces via a few short star hops from the 4th-magnitude star Iota Piscium in the circlet of Pisces.  This object is number 107 in Stephen O’Meara’s book “Hidden Treasures.”  I then started observing the targets within 10 degrees of Polaris described in the “Suburban Stargazer” column from the November issue of Sky & Telescope.

Unfortunately, my observations were interrupted by an incident just before 8:00.  I was about to put in an O III filter to observe planetary nebula IC 3568 (Hidden Treasure 64), when I saw light spill out from one of the bathroom doors.   This was shocking because I had checked the park for cars and made sure that nobody was in the bathrooms before I locked the gates at 5:35.  I hadn’t propped open the restroom doors because I didn’t intend to stay as late as their automatic locking time, so I knew that they had been closed.  I watched the area for several seconds, wondering if I had really seen the light or just somehow imagined it, but then the light flashed again and I thought I heard one of the doors open.  I quickly grabbed my phone from the Starsense dock, jumped in my car and pulled out into the road in front of the bathrooms.  I stayed there for a minute or two and didn’t see anyone around, but I saw that the motion-triggered light was on in the men’s room.  I called a ranger, who told me that I could just lock up and leave and that one of the rangers might come around later in the night to check on things.  I turned on the park lights and locked up HALO and then packed up my gear while keeping an eye on the restroom area.  I saw a fox running down the road, but no humans.  I had the deadbolt locked on the HALO door while I was observing, so nobody could’ve gotten in there during that time.

I locked up the park gates and left at 8:35 without any further incidents.

Ernie