[AZ-Observing] Fred Lawrence Whipple Astronomy Day Star Party
- From: Skylook123@xxxxxxx
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:46:31 EDT
An observing report I also posted on the Cloudy Nights and TAAA astronomy
forums.
There was quite a large group of Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association
(Tucson) and Sonora Astronomical Society (Green Valley) volunteers gathered
last night at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory Visitor Center in Amado,
AZ at the base of Mt. Hopkins. The Smithsonian Institution'There was quite a
large group of Tucson Amateur Astronomy As
_http://www.cfa.http://www.chttp://www.http://www.cfa.http_
(http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities/flwo/starparty.html)
with an open house, exhibits, planetarium shows, and lectures, and both
daytime and night time observing.
I was supporting the evening activities. As the afternoon progressed, the
weather looked mighty ugly, with white stratus seemingly everywhere around
my Marana home. The telephone information number was declaring that the
show was on, so I headed down about 4:30 even though the IR satellite showed
white junk all the way to San Diego.
All the way down, the sky was threatening to clear a bit, but still was a
bowl of milk when I got to the visitor center. About a dozen daytime
volunteers had a variety of scopes set up on the sun, a dim ball progressing
westward. I slowly set up the Atlas near Jerry Farrar, and just did the social
thing without much hope of clearing.
The social gathering with the Sonora club is always fun, as with all
Arizona astronomy groups. Great group of people to circle up with. Just for
that
gathering I was glad I went down. At sunset, the Moon and Venus started
burning through, but dimly. I set my 10" on the Moon at about 100X, and it was
nicely subdued. The three day moon was just enough to show the terminator
effects on the elevations and a nice contrast with one half showing a
couple of very large, lava filled craters and the other half a collection of
small meteor impacts and lunar mountains, like bubbling oatmeal. The passing
visitors (many came for the lectures and planetarium shows) were all
interested in the view.
I was getting crabby about the total lack of alignment stars in the murky
sky when Sirius and Procyon started to peek through. Still nothing in the
rest of the sky until Saturn and Mars came dimly into view. I stayed on the
moon. Suddenly, about 7:45 PM, the sky magically opened up. In about 10
minutes the total overcast disappeared! I went over to the Orion Nebula and
had
a great time with the visitors. There was a gap in the crowd so I did an
iterative polar alignment and then a 2-star alignment. Made a mistake there
and used Sirius as the second star. It was too low for accuracy and the
GOTOs were off for the rest of the night.
When I was done with the alignment I went over to M51, The Whirlpool,
which was a nice addition to the visitors' experience after the other
volunteers' views of the Moon, Saturn, and a variety of open clusters and other
items. It was fairly dim, but the spiral character of the main galaxy was
detectable. The 23 million light year distance impressed some folks as well. I
wasn't really happy with the dim view, however, so I went over to NGC3242,
The Ghost of Jupiter. It was a nice, bright disk of a planetary nebula. I
spent the rest of the session doing the stellar evolution story. The 9:30 PM
shut down time came far too soon!
So glad I changed my mind about staying home. It only took about 10
minutes for the sky to go from totally obscured to clear. And the crowd at the
FLWO open houses are always great to work with, very interested in what they
see and in discussing the cosmology of the day. FLWO does a great job with
the planetarium shows and outdoor lectures. And the TAAA and SAS volunteers
are such an enjoyable gang to hang out with. All in all, a good time was
had by all.
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
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