[AZ-Observing] GCSP Day Three from Jim O'Conner

I am not going to get in trouble for reposting this one, he gave 
permission this time.  Jim is on 28kb dialup to send these from GCSP and 
is only posting to CN.

Andrew

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

*Grand Canyon Star Party 2006-DAY THREE*

Last night was better than Night Two, but still windy.

The lower lot is still fully occupied by large storage buildings and 
other construction materials. Those of you who've been up there before 
have a feeling for the size of The Pit, but let's just say that except 
for the path through the gate and down the hill, all flat space on the 
bottom is occupied, and stacked at least 15 feet high with a variety of 
pipes, buildings, prefab walls, etc. Don't think it'll be possible to 
clear it out while we're here.

Night Three was not as crowded at our end of the parking lane, but the 
area up near the Observing Station seem denser, if possible. Imagine 
three one-way parking lanes from a small shopping plaza parking lot, 
maybe 30 slots on each side of each lane. Lanes two and three are 
inbound to the station, lane one is outbound. Lane three, one-way 
inbound on the right coming in, and lane one, on the left coming in but 
one way outbound, form sort of a pair of parentheses. Lanes two and 
three are flat paved, with parking between them sized for tour 
buses/motor homes. Between lanes one and two is a wide island, fully 
forested. Most setup is in the parking slots along the outside of the 
curved outbound lane. The inside-of-the-curve parking slots are used for 
parking the astronomers' vehicles. However, with some slots having 
three, four, or five scopes, those slots disappear fast. Overflow for 
both setup and parking is on the other side of the trees in lanes two an 
three. The single car wide lanes are roped to allow traffic. Park 
shuttle busses run through ever 15 minutes until after 11 PM, and there 
are NO traffic restrictions. Kind of like setting up in the middle of 
third world bazaar. The mostly extremely young National Park Service 
rangers are awesome at traffic management. As hectic as it sounds (and 
it is!), I'm really enjoying the whole chaotic experience. Setup is OK, 
but to score a spot for the night I've been backing the truck into the 
spot I want around 10 AM when the lot is mostly empty. Then around 5:15 
PM I pull a couple of feet forward, empty the equipment out, and drive 
around to Lane 2 and park. The shuttle bus service is so good that 
unless we're going out of the park, we don't need the truck. Still, by 
midnight, after standing and yakking for six hours to maybe 100-200 
visitors, and occasionally climbing the ladder to keep things in view, 
having to take it all down and pack the truck each night makes the 60 
year old feet, legs, and back holler for mercy. I miss the Pit! On with 
the show.

The wind was still intrusive, but not so bad as the last night. The 
visitors were very patient waiting out the gusts and letting me reline 
up the super kite on the object of interest.

If anything, though, the seeing and transparency were better last night. 
The southwestern winds are doing a good job of keeping the smoke from 
the current batch of Arizona wildfires out of the way.

I started out, as usual, with Jupiter. But so did everyone else! I 
started up around 7:45, while the sun was still above the horizon. 
Jupiter was just a tiny white dot, but we all found it. And was it ever 
spectacular, again! I held onto it for almost an hour; always a line of 
folks wanting a view. Went back to it off and on all night. The image in 
the 9mm Nagler was HUGE. I will say that I've done a good job at keeping 
the mirrors clean and the scope collimated, and it's paying off greatly. 
Folks who claim to have never seen it before are counting 10 bands. In 
one brief look when the wind was quiet, I stopped counting. After 
sunset, some of us whipped over for a last look at Saturn on the 
horizon. Another star of the show, since the smaller kids could just 
stand and look in. Universal excitement; even with the truss darn near 
flat, Cassini looked like a highway and most visitors could notice the 
subtle shading of the planet itself.. It was extremely gratifying for 
all the visitors to repeat that Jupiter and Saturn looked the best in 
this scope compared to all the others they'd looked into. The great 
atmospherics allowed me to pump it up to over 250X easily. The 
collimation allow the images to be the crispest I've ever seen. At least 
five of the visitors who claimed to be new at this reported the 
turbulence in the Jovian bands without my coaching. And even the 8 year 
olds described Cassini perfectly, with enthusiasm. OK, enough of the 
easy stuff.

I hate to move on to another object with a line at the scope and the 
departing folks entusiastic about what they saw, so I was a little 
behind the folks near me at moving onto deep sky items. Since Hercules 
Cluster and the Ring Nebula were in view on a half dozen other scopes, I 
went over to the Sombrero. Best ever. Dust lane screaming out. Gorgeous 
stellar core. Usually I run about 25% visitors who just can't see what 
we're talking about, but this time I didn't have to prompt at all. Not a 
single "I can't see it". One "I just saw this in a magazine and it looks 
just like it but upside down." Quite a few "Now I see why it's called 
that."

A digression. So far, the one memory I'll carry away from this year's 
trip was on Night Two. While we were looking at Jupiter, just after the 
ball of the sun had disappeared and most visitors were up at the top of 
the lane at the nightly slide show, a lady who seemed in her 60's came 
up. She was maybe 5'1" tall, and the wind should have blown her away. 
Something about her mannerisms struck me as very dignified. After she 
looked at Jupiter, first we discussed what she had seen; she was very 
curious, and quite able to understand what I was explaining. Then she 
told me something I could tell from her accent. She said "I'm an Indian, 
(meaning Native American), and when we were young we learned about the 
stars". And she quietly related how when she was young, the "fathers and 
grandfathers" taught the children how to find their way by the stars. 
She talked about how they learned how to find their way at the bottom of 
the Grand Canyon, when all they could see were certain bright stars each 
season. It was still light; only Jupiter and Vega were visible. We 
talked a bit about how civilizations have reasons to look up, and how 
some other cultures used the stars. She was short on time, and wanting 
to come back later to talk about what she'd learned so long ago, but she 
was couldn't stay longer that night. I really hope she makes it back 
this week; her visit still hangs with me after two days.

Anyway, on Night Three as the crowds began to dwindle down, I broke away 
from the Ring and Dumbbell I'd been showing and talked with the dozen or 
so folks left about multiple stars. If a star condenses out of a gas 
cloud, why only one star? I used that as an intro to Arabic naming 
convention for bright stars, hopped up with the laser pointer to Cygnus, 
pointed the Summer Triangle and how to use it to find Polaris after the 
Big Dipper has set, then on to Deneb and finally put the scope on 
Albireo. Another easy Oh Wow at the blue/gold pair. Then we finished 
with the Acor/Mizar view. Got the usual 60% who could see the pair naked 
eye, so I told them with that ability to resolve at a distance they 
could be leaders in the Persian army a few millenia ago. Then I put the 
9mm on Mizar and got the next set of Oh Wows. How Alcor jumps out, and 
the neat little blue star in the middle of it all.

With that, my feet, legs, and back were gone along with the visitors. 
Shared an incredible view of M51 with those hearty of us who didn't mind 
a three step climb up the ladder. Gave up after that.

Observing buddy John (who was wowing them with the Veil in his homebuilt 
14" tube dob) helped me pack up and load the truck. He's off to the 
North Rim for a few nights. I'll be here as long as the body survives. 
This stuff is SO much fun!

Oh, BTW, why the 9mm, when objects take about 45 seconds to wander 
across? Two reasons. First, visitors new to looking through the 
telescope seem to need practice to interpret the smaller image sizes of 
some DSOs at lower power. So if the seeing supports it, I use it since 
the Nagler's FOV makes it possible to show an object to two or three 
folks without having to recenter. And I've been able to talk some of 
them through the gentle lift or push to keep it centered in the field, 
minimizing my need to interfere. Second, people with astigmatism (and 
I'm one of them!) have trouble looking through the smaller powers since 
the exit pupil crosses more of the imperfect cornea curvature. Since so 
many people come through my stop, it's difficult to roll back the eye 
guard for people with glasses and then roll it back up for those without 
glasses (or wipe out the eyepiece with eyelash oils). So, I recomment to 
folks with glasses that they remove them for a better view, and that 
means that resulting astigmatism is minimized with high power. Image 
size, and astigmatism. I do go up to 22mm, or even 50 mm, on the Veil, 
Lagoon, Swan, etc.

OK, off to dinner and on to Day Four...

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


Andrew Cooper
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.siowl.com



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