[AZ-Observing] Observing_Report_GCSP_2011_Day_1_Expect_The_Unexpected.txt
- From: Skylook123@xxxxxxx
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:40:48 -0400 (EDT)
Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY ONE - The Unexpected Is Normal
Location: Grand Canyon Visitor Center, South Rim of Grand Canyon, AZ,
about 340 miles north of home in Tucson, about 7000 ft elevation
Weather: 80s at Noon, 60 at sunset, upper 40s when we quit at 11 PM.
Total overcast until dusk with partial clearing, horrendous winds at 15 to 50
MPH.
Seeing and Transparency: Mostly mediocre due to the high winds and
excessive moisture.
Equipment:
18â?? f/5 2286mm Teeter Telescope newtonian truss dob, Sky Commander DSCs
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
This begins a new era of GCSP, as we move to a new location which has
promise to be a great environment, but also has some interesting features and
work arounds as we all learn to make this work.
As a prologue, Marker Marshall, our Interpretive Ranger contact for the
event, and I have been working steadily since last year to make this happen.
It became clear we would have to move the event from Yavapai Point when
the park shuttle routes changed, with shuttle service to Yavapai stopping and
hour after sunset. This would meean 500 visitor cars trying to fight
their way in to about 45 parking spaces. So, the move was on.
We planned the signs and traffic control and path lighting for maximum
visitor support and safety. The new sight is behind (north of) the main
Visitor Center. Depending on your comfort zone and memory of naming
convention,
this is either the Grand Canyon Visitor Cetner (GCVC) or Canyon View
Information Plaza (CVIP). They are interchangeable.
GCVC has been greatly improved and enhanced over the last few years. Four
large parking lots have been constructed to make this the Go To destination
for park visitors, providing access to the shuttle bus routes for much
reduced stressful travel around GCNP. Around the back are two commercial
lots, for tour buses and vans, and overflow employee parking. We have use of
the employee overflow lot all week; the much larger commercial lot is in use
until after sunset by tour buses, so after we drop off our equipment we
park over in that lot.
Friday was quite a busy day getting ready. Marker, Ranger Mike Weaver,
and several other rangers and ranger aids were whirling dervishes as we layed
out signs, traffic barriers, rubylith on exterior lights, large cardboard
plugs in the windows. and finishing up with a two hour training session on
the all-new audio visual complex in the theater for the night talks. The
console panel resembles the F-18 weapons management panel, but I think this
one is more complex.
We quit at 10 PM, ready for the final push.
Early Saturday I went to the VC and hung the new banner and finished the
rubylith on two theater lights. Then it was solar scope time. Around 11:30
AM I set up the Lunt LS60THa along side Bruce and Betty from East Valley
Astronomy Club and their PST. We were right out front of the Visitor Center
building, in front of the banner. They had been there for a couple of
hours. We had a great time with the walk by traffic; I had 130 visitors at my
scope by 1:30 PM when I quit. There was a lot of prominence activity, as
well as a dainty spread of sunspots. LOTS of kids, all of them very
excited, and the adults were all appreciative of the opportunity to see the
closest star. A whole lot of fun! The winds were already gusting fairly
strongly, and the sun was beating down; like being on a hot griddle. The
whole
time I was set up, astronomer friends were popping by. Steve Hollenback
from Phoenix spent quite a bit of time and helped me get back to the truck
after take down.
One thing that has been very different this time is two of our
granddaughters came down from Colorad Springs to do the week with us.
Jessica, the 17
year old, is the safety valve 10" scope operator, and Karina is helping my
wife Susan hand out the star maps at the night talk. Totally changes the
dynamics of our day to day operations! Plus, my youngest son and daughter
in law came up from Phoenix with our other two granddaughters, so where we
used to be two, we were now eight, people with agendas. Amusing.
I headed over to the new site to set up, and the winds were impossible and
the cloud cover was depressing, and the temperature fell like a brick so we
were quite layered in clothing by sunset. John Anderson, long time
observing partner, did the night talk on the morphology of galaxies, so we
walked
over around 7:30 to set up. The whole talk went very well, and the whole
AV system got us through. Our audience was in excess of 270.
After shut down, we went out to the scopes and the whole environment was
depressing. I had unpacked the 18" and put it in the weather shroud and
weighted it down. No point tonight. Rich Russin, a returning astronomer from
Florida, is using my 10" for the first two nights. He is unfamiliar with
it, and it was quite a challenge running out after the presentation to try
to get things to working. Luckily, the visitor crowd was pretty thin.
The site is certainly every bit as dark as we could have hoped for! We've
lost nothing moving over here. It does, however, seem more crowded; we'll
have to learn how to make the best use of the site.
Rich and I hopped around to various targets to see how the sky was
behaving. The jitter in the eyepiece was awful, making it very hard to focus.
Among some other targets we had Saturn, the Leo Trio of galaxies, M81 and
M82, M51 and the supernova, M4, probably a few more. My granddaughter Haley
actually picked out a great naked eye cluster, Mel111/Cr256, the Coma
Berenices star cluster. At lower elevations I just had never seen this item,
between Leo and Coma Berenices. Very nice star cloud. In the telescope, the
visitors loved whatever Rich showed them; always a great crowd here.
It was so cold and windy, visitor attendance fell off sharply around 10 PM,
so most of us were packed up and out of there by 11 PM. The moon rising
really stole the sky away as well. The weather is promised to improve
gradually; as I am typing this on Sunday afternoon, we are under a high wind
warning until 8 PM, then it's is supposed to drop to 5 MPH after sunset.
Temps, though are getting down into the 30s, NOT what I was expecting.
At noon we had a pizza party in the campground that was really well
attended. Two very important events were conducted. First, we presented an
award to our Ranger Marker Marshall, who has been our contact point for six
years. The spirit of the event for the first 20 years, Valerie Vance-Goff,
sadly passed away in Februrary. Late last year, however, she started an
effort to recognize Marker. Marilyn Unruh commissioned a small hardware
sculpture with an observer and a telescope, with a woman ranger standing near
by
pointing up at the sky to a child. Very nicely done. After we presented
the award, about 20 of us who knew Valerie walked over to a nearby clearing
where we formed a large circle and those who wanted to, said something
about Valerie that had meaning to us. We then scattered some of her ashes.
She'll be part of us always.
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
Grand Canyon Cell Phone: 520-405-6551
gcsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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