Days 10-13 Pie Town, NM: We arrived in Pie Town at 3:30 pm - about half an hour later than planned. Unfortunately we didn't have cell phone service, so we couldn't alert the person meeting us at the road to the house we rented. But John was good natured and understanding when we got there.
The house sits off of Hwy 60 about 5 total miles - all of it dirt and gravel and it is remote and the views and the horizons are spectacular. There were wide open vistas with a mountain in the background and no other houses nearby.
This 180 degree panorama is take from the back deck of the house. The house can be seen at both ends of the picture. Sawtooth mountain can be seen at the left end. The mountain at the center is called Allegris. The red structure is our igloo tent.
*-*-*
Barry is in the back yard setting up the telescope. It was a very warm, windy day. There was a weather station in the house which reported wind speeds and during the day it was typically 12-30 miles an hour, and usually around 20 mph. For two of the nights, the wind stopped at twilight which allowed for great scoping.One night the wind stayed pretty constant and caused star trailing.
*-*-*
One of the things that was fascinating, coming from Georgia with all of our stately trees, was the struggle trees have for existance in New Mexico. In many areas there are none. At the house there were cedars which were short, gnarled and, in their own way beautiful.
*-*-*
Here is another cedar which had died. It looked like it was scuplted by the wind. In any given field there are both live and dead trees juxtapositioned, leading one to wonder why this one survived and that one didn't.
*-*-*
This dead tree, standing next to a live one looked so intricate with all of its small branches still intact. It looked like it must have been a recent casualty and it reminded one of the precarious nature of life here as well as the stark beautiy of the land.
*-*-*
Here is the house we rented - it looks a little plain from the outside. Inside, however was another story. It was very soundly constructed and well insulated. It held a pretty even temperature the whole time we were there around 70-75 degrees with no heating or air conditioning turned on, in spite of the 85 degree weather outside and the much cooler 60 degree nights. It was very tastefully decorated by the owner to create a peaceful, lush paradise in this harsh dry land.
My favorite room was the sitting room which looked across the plains to the mountains. It had windows along one wall and you could watch wildlife.
*-*-*
This pair of cranes were part of the decor in the house we rented. Barry and I were both struck by the relaxing serenity of the interior achieved by our host.
*-*-*
This little guy would come sit on the window sill several times a day and knock on the window with his beak. We didn't know why he kept coming back and thought perhaps it was to get respite from the ceaseless winds.
*-*-*
After visiting the window, he would go to the back deck and tap on the sliding glass door.
*-*-*
Barry finally caught the little bird on the rail after one of his visits.
*-*-*
Here is a picture of our Igloo Command Center with the telescope sitting adjacent. By setting up the computer and monitor in the Igloo we contain their light and preserve the darkness outside.
The Igloo is an ice fishing shelter which is quilted and blacked out so that no light gets in or out. It also doubles as a tent for us if we are in a remote observing location with no facilities. It also blocks the wind and cold.
*-*-*
Here is a view from inside the Igloo during the day with the window flaps open. We have a card table for the computer and Barry brought his 34" curved monitor. We have a couple of cozy lawn chairs. We modified the windows with velcroed screens to keep out the insects.
*-*-*
The crescent moon rises early in the morning on our first night in Pie Town. We are excited to finally be set up and ready to take some pictures. First up, though, is polar aligning, making a T-Point run, collimating the telescope and focusing. Typically, with no problems, this can take between 1 and 2 hours and must be done if the telescope is moved to a new location. Collimation and focusing are usually 10-20 minutes of that.
For the polar alignment, Barry does a rough alignment using a compass when he sets up. Then we got to use our new tool - the Polemaster, to do the final alignment. The Polemaster takes a series of images, with manipulation of and adjustments to the telescope in between. We just got this before we came on the trip and it is wonderful. Very repeatable and reliable in polar aligning.
A T-point run takes a minimum of 25 pictures of the sky with the telescope in different positions and matches the pictures to sky charts to determine the exact poistion of the telescope for that image. It then creates a mathematical model of the positions to improve the pointing accuracy of the telescope.
Below are the astro-photographs we took while in Pie Town.
*-*-*
The Triffid Nebula, M20, Stack of Twenty 10 min. guided exposures with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
A spiral galaxy, M83, single 20 min. guided exposure with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
The Sombrero galaxy, M104, single 20 min. guided exposure with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
A globular cluster, M13, single 60 sec. exposure with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
The Swan Nebula, M17, single 10 min. exposure with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, single 20 min. exposure with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
The Cigar Galaxy, M82, single 5 min. exposure with ZWO 094 one-shot color camera on a Celestron C-14 at F-11.
*-*-*
A timelapse video of the Milky Way rising as seen from Pie Town, New Mexico, on the night of May 12-13, 2018. Taken with a Canon 60Da DSLR camera with a Canon 8-15mm fisheye lens. Exposures taken every 40 seconds from 7:44PM to 3:33AM. Nightime exposures were 30 seconds at F4.
The occasional light to the lower right is Barry checking on the camera. The lights in the distance are cars on the road. The streaks across the sky are airplanes.
*-*-*
We were sitting at breakfast one morning and Barry spotted some cows in the field behind the house. There were 5 of them and later in the day when we went out to have pie in Pie Town, they were lounging in the shade along one of the dirt roads we traveled on.
*-*-*
Omega, New Mexico
From our last trip to the area, we remembered that we had cell phone coverage in the next town over, Quemado. So before we went to Pie Town on a pie run, we drove over to Quemado and sat in a parking lot next to the general store and checked messages, email, video feed from our house in Canton, etc.
On the way to Quemado is a place called Omega which appears to be nothing more than a junkyard. But what amazes us is the variety of items in the yard.
In Pie Town we had slices of pie at Pie-o-Neer at the recommendation of John. It was delicious. I had berry and Barry had blueberry, both with scoops of vanilla ice cream. The owner was very friendly and asked all of her visitors where they were from and where they were going.
*-*-*
We saw a small prairie dog village along the road to the house. The prairie dogs were scampering about. Here is one standing up to see what is what.
*-*-*
Another of the prairie dogs made a run for his hole and here he is just peeking out.
*-*-*
We also saw another pronghorn antelope near the road. They seem to be pretty abundant in New Mexico.
*-*-*
One of the nice things about renting a house is the ability to cook, relax and "make yourself at home" even if you are travelling. While eating out is fun, at first, when you are traveling - eventually you grow tired of it and changing rooms every day can be stressful.
In Pie Town, eating-in wasn't only a pleasure in the well-appointed kitchen of the house we rented, it was a necessity. There are no real restaurants in Pie Town, although, for Mother's Day Barry did take me to the Pie Town Cafe for burgers! They were delicious.
*-*-*
This jack rabbit showed up one morning and we watched him nibble on the green tips of plants for a while.
*-*-*
A male wood pecker visits our water bowl. He came every morning to drink.
John said we could fill this bowl on our deck with water to attract birds. In this very dry area water is a bigger attraction for wildlife than food.
*-*-*
The female woodpecker making her way to the water bowl.
*-*-*
Here was another visitor to the water dish. He was the same brilliant blue as the bowl.
*-*-*
Barry saw a couple of lizards sunning themselves on the steps. We saw them in abundance around the house.
*-*-*
There were also a number of these beetles around the yard.
*-*-*
The weather forecast for the last night in Pie Town had been for winds and clouds so we made the decision to pack up the astronomy equipment and load the van the night before. That would leave us with only loading the food and clothing the next day before we left. This would also break up the tasks of taking down the astronomy equipment in Pie Town and setting it up in Casitas de Gila (our next destination) to two different days. Each effort takes between 2 and 3 hours.
On our last morning, we were sitting and looking out the door to the back deck when we spotted a chipmunk scampering along the deck. He went past our field of view and then he came back across the railing and made a bee-line to the water dish.
Barry figured out that he had run up a cedar sculpture on the deck and jumped to the railing to get to the dish.
We finished packing, locked up and headed out around 10 am for the three and a half hour drive to Gila, NM
*-*-*
At one stop to switch drivers along our drive to Gila, we stopped at a road side rest area. We found this sign amusing and a bit disturbing.
*-*-*
We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant in Reserve, NM called Carmen's. The food was really good - but spicy to us tenderfoots from the east!
*-*-*
The drive through the mountains of western New Mexico was very scenic. The road was serpentine and there were larger trees in this area than we had seen previously in this part of New Mexico.
*-*-*
The road would drop down into valleys and you could see more mountains in the distance.
*-*-*
We passed by the Cosmic Campground and turned in. It had originally been a camping destination and we wanted to check it out for future reference. It was disappointing. The whole area had cows (and cow droppings) including at the pads for the telescopes. The parking area and roads had been torn up, ostensibly for expansion, and heavy equipment was sitting around. The only hospitable area for camping was a field to the side of one of the parking areas.
*-*-*
Barry is standing on one of the pads at Cosmic Campground. When construction is complete and the cows are kept out of the campgound area (they seem to be adding cattle guards) this will be a great place to come.
*-*-*
This is a scenic view of a valley with some spectacular cliffs, around Glenwood, NM.
*-*-*
Changing drivers - Lori standing next to our van.
We arrived in Gila, NM and made our way up a long, winding gravel road to Casita de Gila. We learned one thing from that part of the drive - Lori does not like driving on gravel roads that climb into the mountains. Barry will be doing that part of the trips from now on! We'll pick up our story in the next segment - Casitas de Gila.
