Well not exactly the very top of the world but pretty high up. Pie Town NM is close to 8000 feet elevation and the observatory site is slightly above. Pie Town is located along U.S. Highway 60 in Catron County. Its name comes from an early bakery for making dried-apple pies that was established by Clyde Norman in the early 1920s. Pie Town is the location of a “Pie Festival” on the second Saturday of each September. Pie Town is also located immediately north of the Gila National Forest and not very far west of the Plains of San Augustin, the location of the Very Large Array radio telescope.
But of course I did not come here to make pies! Pie Town is also the location of SkyPi Remote Observatory, a relatively small telescope hosting site run by two guys, John and Michael, for about the last 15 years. The SkyPi site boasts some of the best astronomical seeing in North America and one of the few permanent observatory sites you can still experience the darkest skies, about Bortle 1+. The “plus” is because there is the tiniest light dome visible from Albuquerque toward the northeast, maybe 5 degrees altitude by about 5 azimuth. But that’s it. Besides that no ambient light for miles and miles.
It’s not much of a town. In fact the observatory owners are the only people I ever see there! Looks like the last census that was done was less than 200 population.
Anyway this post is a collection of images from my journey up there to finally install the first of my two larger telescope rigs.
The journey to Pie Town takes you right past the Very Large Array National Radio Observatory. The Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico, northwest of Socorro, is a flat stretch of desert far from major cities. The Plains are ringed by mountains, which act like a natural fortress of rock that keeps out much of the radio interference from cities even hundreds of miles away.
The desert climate of the San Agustin Plain is critical to the success of the VLA. Humidity is a real problem in radio astronomy, because water molecules distort the radio waves passing through them and also give off their own radio waves that interfere with observations at certain frequencies. Radio telescopes that collect radio waves in the same frequencies as water’s radio waves need to be in deserts to reduce this background signal from Earth-based water molecules.
Perhaps I made the mistake of going up there to do the install on Friday the 13th! Although I am not particularly superstitious we had a couple of mishaps. The first was while placing the mount on the pier we didn’t realize it was not properly secured when adding counterweight and it promptly launched itself off of the pier and onto the floor! What saved the mount was a carpeted wood floor and the fact that the gears were not in the locked position! One of the securing bolts got severely bent and had to be cut with a bolt cutter and replaced. They have those resources there thankfully!
The PC I am using for now is an older one and still runs Windows 7. It took a while to get it going on the network but after a day or so it was fine.
The next issue was the focuser would not power up. I was trying everything to get it started and could not do it by the time I had to leave the next day. Turns out the problem was the same one I had when I first installed it but I had forgotten. The DC adaptor used by the Italian company Reginato has the polarity reversed! So I asked John if I could go back up there to fix it despite there being a winter weather advisory on that day, but since I had it off work I was determined and he obliged. I met Michael up there in the snowstorm and he gave me the keys to the observatory. It was an easy fix to reverse the plugs on the rig-runner and the focuser powered up no problem!
And now let’s cut to the chase here. The reason we moved out here in the first place was the seeing. As you can see it’s pretty darn good! Since I started imaging a week or two ago I have yet to see anything sustained over 1.5 arc sec and frequently it’s sub arc sec!
First light image from SkyPi of the “Bubble” galaxy in Leo! Very happy with the resolution and no question everything is operating better with the improved sky conditions. Guiding is consistently .5 arc sec RMS or lower so I can easily get these longer subs and overall I am going to say so far the average full width half max numbers are at least a full arc second less than before!
So first overall impressions are that this was an excellent choice. It’s a much smaller facility than most and in this case I have my own roll-off which is fantastic! Usually you are sharing your roll-off with, in some cases, 10 or more scopes. Here the most would be one other pier. John and Michael provide phenomenal customer service. I can go up there when I need to and stay in the guest housing for no additional charge. It’s a real family like atmosphere there and you can get expert assistance when you need it. The basic operation of the roll-off is very smooth. Honestly I can’t think of any negatives so far.
Now time to get to work!
And that’s the end of the SkyPi first light adventure! Hopefully the beginning of a long run up there.
Thanks for reading!
DrDave