Costa Rica - Southern Sky Fiesta
Seeing
an advertisement in Sky & Telescope I signed up for an astronomy-related trip to
Costa Rica in the winter of 2007. The
company
that did all the planning and made all the arrangements was TravelQuest
International (http://www.tq-international.com)
owned and operated by Aram Kaprielian who has a great deal of experience in
setting up trips like this (check out their website). Aram had sponsored
this trip for several years and had it down pat. He rented an entire
complex of little duplex bungalows in a remote spot on the Bay of Nicoya on the
Pacific coast. The entire place was devoted to astronomy. At night,
no white light was allowed. All the bungalows were equipped with red
lights. My bungalow is shown here. It was very comfortable.
(at least one spouse was somewhat annoyed that white lights were even prohibited
inside the cabins at night).
Everyone on the trip brought a telescope.
I brought my 12.5". It turned out to be the largest scope in the group.
If you came on this trip without a telescope, it would be quite easy to bum
views the whole week. Everyone was
very
friendly.
There were nearly 40 people at this Central American Star Party. Aram
brought along a real deep sky expert in Sky & Telescope's own Gary Seronik who
writes a section of the magazine each month and who just had published his most
recent book on binocular astronomy.
I got a free frequent flyer ticket but, to get it, had
to upgrade to first class (poor me) so it cost 50,000 miles. Departing
Dulles International, I changed planes in Miami and then on to San Jose, the
capital of Costa Rica. I was met at the airport by an agent of TravelQuest
and taken to the hotel we were staying at that night in San Jose. That
night I met everyone who was on the trip. People from
all
over the US mostly. All interested in astronomy, but also interested in
seeing some of Costa Rica. Some were on a return visit to this same star
party. That night we had a great meal in a Cuban restaurant and got to
know each other. The next morning, bright and early, we boarded a modern
bus for a 4-hour ride over the mountains to the Pacific coast. We
arrived at our destination which they had named The Costa Rica Star Lodge.
There was a row of bungalows facing south with a grassy field in front where we
set up our telescopes
each night. This picture was taken at dusk with
participants coming
out to set up their scopes. Mine is the dob with the
black nylon shroud.
Each night we got excellent views of very southerly objects. I spent a great deal of time in the Large Magellenic Cloud identifying bright nebula and star clusters. It was pretty low to the horizon, but still was observable in the telescope. Naked eye is was pretty dim due to its low altitude.
Every day we took day-trips to cloud forests or other touristy delights. We stopped the bus on a bridge one day to look over at the crocodiles.
This is the view from my front porch facing due
south. We had an excellent southern horizon overlooking the Gulf of Nicoya.
A nice swimming pool is just off to the left and a boat dock is just down the
hill. One day they took us on a boat ride through the nearby mangrove
swamps to see lots of birds and water creatures.
I would recommend this trip to anyone who has never seen the southern skies and wants a bit of touristy Costa Rica. It was fun. The sky was pretty dark (8-9) even though there was some humidity that decreased transparancy (7-8). I didn't do any high-power observing and didn't remark on the seeing, but I would guess with all that water it was pretty good.
Galaxies that were more than 20 degrees above the horizon were pretty easy.
Good choice for an astrotrip!
