A Week in West Virginia
On June 4, 2026, I had the privilege to be invited to Ripley, WV, to present to the teachers of Jackson County on how to incorporate space science into their curriculum. I grew up in WV and jumped at the opportunity to help the teachers in my home state!
My parents live in Mason County, which is right beside Jackson County, so this was an excellent opportunity to spend some time visiting them on their 134 acre farm in what has become Amish country with their Bortle 4 skies. So since I was traveling alone this time I packed up the car with my Skywatcher HEQ-5 Pro mount, my Orion 130ST telescope, and all my cameras (along with some fly fishing gear so dad and I could head for the mountains). Using the Astropheric site I saw that there would be several nights of good seeing, which after two weeks of clouds in Atlanta was a welcome change!
The first night there it took me some time to figure out where to set up the scope. While the house is on a hill with fields all around, there are lots of trees near the house, and high-tension power lines from the two power plants situated on the Ohio River. I eventually settled on a place in the corner of the old garden plot that gave me a great view of North, West, and South. Since it is currently galaxy season, I wanted to get some of the galaxies around Ursa Major so this spot was perfect!
I spent the first night setting up the scope and getting my guide scope focused and calibrated. I had been doing some research on how exactly to do this, so I took my time with it. I then used the ASIAir Plus’ Polar Alignment feature and got the mount locked in. Slewing to Vega, I installed a Bahtinov mask and proceeded to test the new ZWO Electronic focuser I had installed last week (be on the lookout for a future blog post about what to do when it’s cloudy). Once focus was locked in, I removed the mask and proceeded to slew to M51 and set up a plan to image all night. I got some good data, but I discovered I need to work on calibration frames!
I also got an image of M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. Due to the incoming clouds and the proliferation of satellite streaks, I only ended up with 16 out of the planned 30 frames, so this represents 48 minutes of imaging.
The next day was presentation day! I was scheduled to to run five 45-minute sessions throughout the day. In addition to my Power Point, I had brought along some of my favorite artifacts: A Space Shuttle thermal protection tile, a piece of thermal blanket from JPL, and a piece of shuttle payload bay liner that flew on STS-93, courtesy of Jean Wright. The sessions went great, and all of the teachers seemed engaged and asked some great questions! Thank you to Jackson County Schools for giving me this opportunity!
Steve presenting to the Jackson County teachers.
The week ended with dad and I going trout fishing in the mountains. While we caught no fish, we had an amazing encounter with a bear!
I want to thank the Jackson County, WV Board of Education for inviting me to speak with their teachers. It was a great time, and I look forward to doing it again!