[AZ-Observing] CGSP Day Six from Jim O'Connor

He apparently had some more time for typing today...

Andrew

----------------

Night Six was again similar to previous nights, yet unique (good grief, 
that's trite).

Setup was a little more hectic. Dinner at Maswick Lodge and shuttle ride 
to Yavapai Observation Station took a lot longer than planned; by the 
time we got to the parking area it was past 6 PM. That made acquiring 
sufficient space for the scope, ladder, and work table challenging. 
Deborah graciously moved her C8 over to accomodate Derrick (my big guy). 
It worked out, although it got a little dicey later as Jupiter's 
transition pulled the scope and ladder so close to the table that the 
traffic got very congested in the dark. In the end, there are about 10 
of us crowded into seven parking slots. It's not too difficult for the 
two C11s, the C8, 10" LX200, and 8" LX200, but for the 10" Discovery and 
Orion tube dobs, and three large truss dobs, getting enough swing room 
plus space where anywhere from 30 to 100 people can weave through and 
co-mingle is a real challenge but it's working out.

The wind finally calmed down nicely. However, there have been several 
clusters of wildfires in the area all week. The wind patterns have 
changed, however, so that as sunset is looming, there is a sickly 
yellow-brown overcast to the east and northeast. It ended up noticeably 
worsening the seeing and transparency for the night. Made it merely 
excellent.

From around 7:30 to after 9:30, I hung with Jupiter. The GRS did its 
meridian crossing at 8:50 local time, so we had a good view of it the 
whole time. Once again I used the 9mm Nagler for a 254X view. Prior to 
sunset, about two out of five visiors are detecting the spot as it is 
slowly rotating into view. For the hour around the meridian crossing the 
spot is easily visible, with the detection rate rising to 100% by 20 
minutes after sundown. When at the meridian, the spot is like a creamy 
polka-dot. Nearer to the limbs, it's detected as a break in the line of 
the equtorial belt; then the brain pulls out the spot margins. It seems 
that the non-tracking dob is an asset to detection of the spot. It takes 
about 45 seconds for the planetary image to transit the field of view; 
for most folks I'm pulling the image to one edge of the eyepiece, and 
it's taking them about 10-15 seconds to see the break in the belt, then 
the spot. I tried using a bit of averted vision as I would re-align, and 
it was a similar effect; as the rods in the eye got engaged, they 
detected the contrast of the spot margin or loss of belt continuity 
while the cones were not so capable. It ended up being a very successful 
display, with the image size again drawing raves; their other views are 
generally at 90X, so at this scope they are really having a good time. 
In fifteen years of observing, I'd only seen GRS twice. These folks will 
have a good memory to take with them, and so will I. But, by 9:30, the 
problematic seeing was softening Jupiter to the point where even I had 
trouble seeing banding.

While showing Jupiter, spouse Susan came up and was very excited. Every 
night she walks up to the Canyon rim (not more than 300 steps from us!) 
and takes sunset photos. The texture and shading changes moment by 
moment as the sun disappears behind the sharp edge of the Grand Canyon. 
She had set her Canon EOS SLR to Sport mode; it takes a series of shots 
in succession. She thinks she has a Green Flash! When we lived in the 
Pacific, we used to try to catch them at sunset, but only ever got one 
on film. And wouldn't you know it, the film processing equipment here is 
broken. Won't see 'em until next week.

As the night progressed, I noticed the red glow from the Sky Commander 
DSC controller. Funny, I didn't remember starting it up. Then, checking 
the display, it was showing the double star that was the last item I 
checked the night before. DOH! I had put it away without turning it off! 
And it would die later. Bless those spare batteries.

Next, a succession of galactic views. First, we caught the last gasps of 
Sombrero as it was setting. I hopped back up to Berenices Hairclip. Both 
were nice, but nothing like the crisp, high resolution views of prior 
nights. So, around 10:30, as the crowd was dissipating down to two or 
three at a time coming by my scope, I went over to the candy box of 
galaxies beween Leo, Coma Berenices, and Virgo. I started out on M84, 
the head of Markharian's Chain, running about a degree and a half down 
to M87, roughly on a line between Leo's Denebola (Tail of Leo) to 
Vindamatrix in Virgo. I tried a trick I've used for myself when 
observing the Chain. I'd start by centering the 22mm (0.62 deg FOV) on 
the four galaxies centered on NGC4387 (Mag 12.1) and including M84, M86, 
and NGC4388. The latter three are distributed nearly equally around the 
rim of the FOV. While each visitor would look at the field of galaxies, 
I'd gently lift the nose of the dob and let the chain drift through the 
field. There is actually a Y in the string of galaxies, so I went purely 
vertical down the field that was there at around 10:30; that missed the 
bright group around M87, but it still brought up to 14 galaxies drifting 
through. Could never have done that with the early night crowd, but with 
the sparse group coming through it worked very well. Did this stunt for 
about 50 folks, and from their immediate reactions I think they were 
really surprised at seeing all those galaxies. With an equatorial mount, 
a similar effect can be seen by starting out at M84 and slewing in 
increasing RA; this will take the view down the arm including M87. Fewer 
galaxies down this path, though.

I just thought of something amusing happened earlier in the night. About 
a third of our "customers" are foreign visitors. A young Japanese girl 
REALLY wanted to look at Vega. It was the first star we noticed popping 
out (Arcturus is overhead at sunset, and not many folks are looking up 
there). As she was taking the 2-300 yard walk down the row of scopes, 
she'd heard someone call Vega a diamond; she also apparently heard 
something about a Ring that could be seen in the area. She absoultely 
HAD to look at the diamond. She didn't care at all about Jupiter! So I 
slewed over to the screamingly bright Vega at 254X, and let her look. 
She boke out into a huge grin and kept saying Diamond Ring, Diamond 
Ring, pointing at her ring finger (with an engagement ring!) and walked 
away all bubbling with excitement. Didn't have the heart to say it would 
take about another hour to see the REAL Ring. She would not have 
understood me, anyway. She went away toward the shuttle bus, and her day 
was complete. What a joy to make someone so happy, even it it's not what 
she thought it was.

By now it was after 11 PM and the shuttle buses were no longer running, 
so our only visitors were those who had parked along the nearby roads; 
maybe a dozen total people wandering through. A family of three driving 
through from Las Vegas stopped by; I didn't see any other visitors 
around, so I decided to give a better show than just a look at one or 
two items. After they saw the galaxy demo, I was going to hop over to 
Sagittarius for the eye candy. That's when the DSCs gave up the ghost. I 
did a battery swap, and needed to realign since I planned on staying 
long after they left for some eastern quadrant DSO hops. I started with 
Polaris; it's always a nice example to introduce double stars. The dim 
blue companion is quite a contrast. After a fast jump over to Arcturus 
for alignment, I went over to Albireo. When I only have a few visitors, 
I use this opportunity to explain the Summer Triangle, the Northern 
Cross, and how the IAU codified the constellations and settled on 
formalizing the Arabic names for the bright stars. Albireo was quite a 
surprise! So I finished the multi-star demo with a hop to Mizar/Alcor, 
and the nice dim blue buddy between them. While up there, I went over to 
M51 which was a real knockout. That part of the sky was clear, and again 
the distored arm showed the effects of the prior pass-by of the 
companion galaxy.

On to Sagittarius, where I put in the 22mm with an Ultra High Contrast 
filter. Once again, the swan was shedding feathers all over the view. 
Then Lagoon, where we talked about the open cluster forming at one edge 
and the resulting energy lighting up the nebula and providing the 
compression wave that is triggering successive star formations. The end 
of the night was on M22. I put the unaided 9mm back in, and it filled 
the view while we talked about globular clusters. After the show, they 
said they'll be back for the next night.

As they were leaving, I saw it was about 1230. I heard the telltale 
clacks of equipment cases being deployed as most of us were taking stuff 
down. I was going to start my personal adventures, but my brain just 
wouldn't work. So I joined the exodus. Forty-five minutes later, I was 
packed up. There were maybe 10 or 15 obbservers left at the top of the 
row. At our end, all but two of us were packing up.

We'll probably stay one more night; we'll leave Saturday early, in time 
to get back to Tucson for the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association deep 
sky night at Empire Ranch/Las Cienegas and then a day to crash before 
work on Monday. It may be a few days before the final report; maybe I'll 
wait for the pictures of the Green Flash!

Keep Looking Up ...

--------------------
Jim  
A Bad Night With A Telescope
Beats A Good Night Doing Anything Else

--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please 
send personal replies to the author, not the list.

Other related posts: