FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Discovery Channel Telescope Site Report and Pictures

[Tom Polakis <tpolakis@xxxxxxx>]

Frank Kraljic, Jennifer Keller, and I had the privilege of observing last
night with Brian Skiff at the future site of Lowell Observatory's 4-meter
Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT).  The site is located less than one mile
northwest of the Happy Jack Ranger Station.  My GPS gave an elevation of
7756 feet, not even 200 feet above the surrounding terrain.  My GPS also
gave coordinates of 111 deg, 45', 20" W, 34 deg, 44', 40" N, which
corresponds pretty well with a topographic map.

Pictures from the site, including a couple fisheye star trail shots are here:

http://www.pbase.com/polakis/dct20040612

The site is an environmentally trashed cinder cone, so it's not the easiest
on the eyes if you're expecting a nice Ponderosa forest.  While the climb
is short, it's anything but shallow.  A 4WD vehicle makes it easy, but my
old 2WD truck took two runs at the summit to make it.  Since the
announcement of the future observatory, it has become an attraction.  The
Forest Service has placed a locked gate across the road to prevent
recreational vehicles from plummeting off the cliff to the south.  If the
gate happens to be open, you proceed at your own risk.

The main non-logistical attraction of the DCT site is its seeing, which is
subarcsecond on the typical night, and sub-two-arcsecond on bad nights.
This is far better than the surrounding meadows.  The downside is frequent
wind.  My 20-inch scope was not up to even the light, steady breeze in the
early evening hours.  Frank's telescope handled it without a problem.  His
10-inch with a Spooner mirror resolved Gamma Virginis, an equal-magnitude
binary star with a separation of only 0.5".

In the late afternoon, the transparency forecast did not look encouraging,
but the night did have decent transparency despite prevelant cirrus.  If I
gave "out of 10" ratings, I'd rank it a 6.  Sky darkness is very good,
though, so I'm sure a visitor from the East would have given the night an
11.  Brian was a bit concerned about the extent of the Phoenix light dome
to the south-southwest.  It is significantly worse than Lowell's existing
Anderson Mesa site 25 miles farther north.  To the west are small light
domes and even some individual lights from the Verde Valley.  If you stay
out of those places, though, the sky is "true dark", evidenced by some of
our views.  Jennifer was working through an S&T observing article authored
by Sue French.  The faint edge-on galaxy NGC 5529 showed a bulge and dust
lane.

The Lowell DCT Web site is http://www.lowell.edu/dct/dct.php 

Tom

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