Southern Star Field Trips!

As I pointed out in our last post, part of the fun of attending the new event was having time built into the schedule to do some field trips of local interest.  While they also scheduled a hike to a local waterfall and art gallery tours, the ones I went on were to a local pottery studio and to a local observatory...

The pottery trip on Friday was to visit the studio of Sarah House.  It is a
fully self-contained studio with motorized pans to throw cups to huge bowls, space for glazing and a pretty good-sized kiln.  Turns out as a 12-year-old, her mother enrolled her in pottery classes at Wildacres Retreat, and that initial exposure turned into her avocation! The picture at left is of Sarah turning what will become a vase, with her mother looking on from the background.  Her mom also collaborates by painting on some of the pieces...

I've evidently led a sheltered life, as I'd never

seen this process and I was quite impressed by Sarah's work, and the entire process that leads up to the final product.  She had a small gallery space as well as supplying some of the local galleries in the area, and the variety was very good and all very attractive...  Even the tiles lining the bathroom floor were hand thrown and glazed, and gave the bathroom a personalized feel.

The studio, though remote, was in a lovely area of rolling hills, and with some of the displayed pieces in front of an uncovered window, I tried to balance the exposure to show some of the countryside as well as the pieces.  Unfortunately in this early Spring, the trees were still bare, but I'll bet it is beautifully green in a few weeks.  I bought a little vase (what home doesn't need a little pottery?) that was really pretty to bring back to Arizona...

The field trip on Saturday was to Seven Mile

Ridge Observatory, an informal group of friends who built private observatories about 7 miles (air miles - about a 20 mile drive, it seemed - no straight roads in North Carolina!) from the Southern Star event.  Don, Steve and Frank built a nice little community of domes, and have befriended the local neighbors to keep light levels to a minimum.  Don, who attended the conference, lead the tour, first to his observatory shown here.  Climbing up into the small dome, you can see his very nice Schmidt Cassegrain telescope, which he uses for CCD imaging.  He built the entire structure himself, and is reported to be a handy person to have around.  His observatory is off-grid, running only off solar power.  He also built a little composting outhouse that includes a propane-powered inline water heater for showers.  At left owner Don is at center in the brown shirt, showing another Don at right the innards of the dome.  At right is the monogram design of his embroidered shirt... 


Frank's roll-off was next on our tour. 
Unfortunately, he wasn't present for the tour,  but Don opened the facility so we could see the setup.  The roof rolls off towards the north, exposing the entire sky for imaging.  He has quite an impressive website of his images.  Here at left Melinda and Elaine check out the William Optics refractor on the G-11 mount. 


Finally, the last telescope of the Observatory is

Steve's Sky Shed Pod structure.  He had the telescope removed for some maintenance, but we examined the structure.  He had actually mounted the dome, which uncovers half the sky, on tracks so that it wouldn't obscure the zenith while doing wide-field imaging.