A GREAT time was had by all at Okie-Tex. It was one fabulous week of stargazing. Warm days, cool nights, awesome skies with a much longer time to observe each night than the Nebraska Star Party.
Ellenvega did indeed get off to one of the most spectacular starts in Herschel 400 history. 82 in one week, wow. Jerome shined with the gear he brought with, Wall-E got one heckofa workout, Capt. Kirk's fine 12'5" Dobsonian is one sweet telescope, I got in some carbon stars, did some pretty good sketching of the Sun, both in white light and H-alpha while networking and delivering some (in Okie lingo) "Spring Grove Sody Pop". Randy pulled off the greatest deep sky coup by zeroing in on Einstein's Cross (photons from 8 billion light years away) and had a steady stream of envious visitors coming by to gawk at the OMI 30" EVO telescope.
I think Jerome has missed his calling, though. Instead of being the Mayo radiology department administrator, he should have gone into sales. Jody of Jody's catering and her husband Fred borrowed us their truck to go to Capulain Volcano in New Mexico one day and then Fred gave us a guided tour of the local Oklahoma area 2 days later. They really took a shine to us and it must have been to a phone conversation that they had with Jerome.
We didn't have as much luck with "Crazy Tom" in Kenton, Oklahoma, but that is, of course, another story….. It was A Glorious Week For Astronomy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!