Visit to Jack Newtons Observatory B&B Osoyoos

So the family vacation this year was in the desert bound Osoyoos and Lake area. I took the opportunity to book us into Jack's Observatory B&B for a couple of nights.

Jack if you didn't know is Mr 'SuperNova' Hunter, having discovered 75 of them, well known in the astronomy community, written several books, has his work regularly used by Nasa, and recently got time on the Hubble Space telescope to photography a particular SuperNova!

His home, custom built high up on one of the mountains with a jaw dropping view of Osoyoos and the lake. Jack built the house around his observatory which is a free standing on a concrete pillar buried into the rock below. Jack & Alice run the place as a B&B during the summer, and then head off to his Arizona winter retreat where he is a partner in an custom Astronomy-friendly development where he has 2 more observatories (remote controlled from Osoyoos!).

Inside the observatory he has a 16" Mead SCT mounted on a wedge, with a solar scope piggybacking, along with another APO scope with a DSLR on the end. The real high tech part though is the opening mechanism for his observatory slideback partition....a garage door opener!

Jack runs nightly (and morning) viewing sessions, mainly aimed at beginners with a tour of the major points of interest, e.g. what ever planets happen to be up, Andromeda, etc. He did indulge me by finding Pluto for me (which I had never seen), we had to do it by comparing two photo's taken on consecutive nights to spot the planet's movement. In the morning we viewed more of the planets, and did a bit of solar viewing.

The B&B is amazing, the amount of star related household bits is ridiculous, right down to the light switch covers! Lots of Jacks impressive astronomy photo's on display. The place is air-conditioned which is needed in the desert. Jack and ALice make you feel like family sitting down with you for breakfast, even showing off his new 3D plasma to our kids.

The night sky out here is excellent, very dark skies. You can rent a smaller scope from Jack for your own viewing, or obviously bring your own. Highly recommended if only for a night's stay.