When I first started The Texas Bucket List in 2013, there was one spot on the top of my list that I knew I had to check off. The McDonald Observatory in the Fort Davis mountains. Not only is this destination distant to most folks in our state, it’s also extremely isolated. The drive takes a while but once you make your way to Fort Davis, the closest town to the observatory, you still have to make your way up mountain roads to reach it! But there’s nothing like seeing the domes from a distance as you finally approach the area with one of the darkest skies in the country.
Rachel Fuechsl is the Programs Manager at the McDonald Observatory, and she showed me around the facility that hasn’t seen too many changes over the years, but still has some of the best views in the Lone Star State. The last time I visited, back in 2013, we took in a star party; a chance to learn about the insane number of stars you can see out here. “It’s a very different experience sitting on a back porch and seeing three stars, versus sitting on a back porch and seeing all these constellations and these patterns and these faint objects, millions of light years away. Seeing things like that, I think it’s a very different experience,” Rachel said.
But that night, we got an added experience as we got to bust out the big guns! “What you’re doing different this time, I understand, is visiting our 82-inch telescope tonight,” Rachel said. “We are looking through our original 82-inch or 2.1-meter Otto Struve telescope. This is an 83-year-old telescope now that has, in my opinion, unparalleled views through an eyepiece.”
It is mind-blowing that the original telescope is as old as it is, and still works and does the job. “It’s still doing valuable science pretty much every night of the year. It’s been upgraded a little bit throughout the years. Instrumentation is the main thing that changes on a telescope like that, but the instruments that we attach to it to do the science have advanced with the times,” Rachel explained.
Getting a chance to peer into the heavens behind this huge telescope is nothing new for regular folks like you and me. It’s something they’ve been doing at the observatory since the 1940’s. “That has been part of the observatory’s public programming pretty much since the beginning,” Rachel said. “There are stories of folks that, you’ll get folks that came out here in the early days and remember standing in a line that went down Mt. Locke. People would come and they would stand in line; and the line would go all the way up the stairs to the dome. And people would look in the telescope, have their chance to look in it, then off they go.”
Today it’s a little bit more of an intimate affair with 15 folks a night able to come in on certain dates and see some stunning celestial bodies with their own eyes. “The telescope definitely gives us a view, not only over great distances, but over great periods of time that you can’t get any other way,” Rachel said.
Looking up at the heavens, Rachel said, is humbling, but a great feeling. “I think it’s part of the excitement of astronomy is getting that sense of being a part of something so much bigger than just me and my little life. Really, it’s humbling, but it’s also, I think, inspiring,” Rachel said.
Once the first star shines its light here, it doesn’t take long for the entire sky to come to life, and it leaves you breathless. Then the bay doors to the telescope open and Saul Rivera starts pointing the telescope to some out of this world things to see.
From Jupiter to Mars, star clusters to nebulas, seeing these objects through the lens of this large telescope is truly a humbling experience. “I’ve seen people weep when looking at something through a telescope for the first time. Saturn is one that people often get really choked up about sometimes,” Rachel said.
“Getting someone to look through a telescope; sometimes they haven’t looked through one before; getting these things like Saturn or Jupiter or other similar objects and just hearing their amazement of just like, ‘oh, look, this is something so cool,’ It never gets old,” Saul explained.
“I would say the Orion Nebula is probably my top, top pick. It’s just one of the most beautiful objects in the night sky. I’ve been fascinated by it since I first saw it as a kid,” Rachel said. “There’s this world above us that is masked from us when we’re going about our daily lives. But at a place like McDonald, you can see that, be part of it.”
That’s why coming to the McDonald Observatory is one of my favorite stops on The Texas Bucket List. Seeing this night sky and all the amazing things that surround our small blue diamond in space makes this stop a true jewel on The Texas Bucket List. “I think the world would be a better place if more people got in touch with science and with the natural Dark Sky and the natural world around them,” Rachel said. “It’s part of all of our lives; it’s everybody’s sky to see.”