Okie-Tex Star Party

We have gone star gazing at the Okie-Tex Star Party (okie-tex.com) five times (most recently in September 2024) - something worth doing even if you are not an amateur astronomer. Okie-Tex takes place under one of the darkest skies in the US at the far west end of the Oklahoma panhandle in a place called Camp Billy Joe. It is walking distance from Kenton, OK; population 17; no gas station, no restaurants, three active churches, and several nice B&Bs nearby that have more business than you would guess.

We take a telescope or two and our binoculars, but you do not need any of that to experience looking at the stars under a very dark sky. In fact, one of our best experiences at the star party was when we had left a part of our telescope at home and were unable to use it. After dark, we walked around, made a few friends, and looked through about a half dozen very nice telescopes that belonged to others. I have never met anyone at the star party that did not enjoy showing others what they were looking at. One friend we made was Bill Tschumy. Bill is a software developer and a very good amateur astronomer who enjoys giving guided tours of the night sky. He helped develop the popular "Sky Safari" app and single handedly created the "Our Galaxy" app both worth having if you have the slightest interest in astronomy or cosmology. "Our Galaxy" is free and also ad free.

Last year (2023) at the star party a woman had brought her two boys, set up a tent near us and just enjoyed camping out. And we enjoyed showing them some neat stuff in our telescope.

Even if you do not look through a telescope, you will see the night sky differently here simply because the sky is dark. The Milky Way stands out quite nicely. There are no places like it east of the Mississippi River and not many like it west of the Mississippi.

The normal crowd at Okie-Tex is about 300 people with tents, campers, and RVs and about that many telescopes set up and looking up. We have friends that we only see at Okie-Tex and always make a new friend. The chow hall is open each night until 2:00am and there are astronomy related presentations in the afternoons in the new meeting hall built by the Oklahoma City Astronomy Club - the sponsor of the star party.

We took the Cumberland to the 2022 Okie-Tex. It was a good time and with nice, uneventful weather. That was the year we could not use our telescope. 2023 was a different story. The second night a storm hit Camp Billy Joe just before dark with high winds, lightning, and rain that lasted three or four hours. The gusts exceeded 50mph. My brother's tent collapsed, breaking the poles, and a number of tents and canopies were blown across the desert. We made sure the guylines were taut and weathered the storm in the Cumberland without incident. This year (2024) we took the Cumberland and the weather was again nice and uneventful. We got a chance to try our new cover with a radiant barrier and it worked as we hoped. (see blog about field test 4)

At the Okie-Tex Star Party (okie-tex.com) in the Oklahoma panhandle. That night the wind collapsed the tent on the left and blew away the canopy behind the Cumberland.  They got the yellow tent down quick enough to save it, slept in their car and we cooked breakfast for them the next morning.