[sac-forum] Re: Wednesday Night's Site Evaluations

Tom 
Is there a program that will convert the format that you are using for
Lat/Long to DD.MM.SS

Thomas Hilton

-----Original Message-----
From: sac-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:sac-forum-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Tom Polakis
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 7:08 PM
To: sac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [sac-forum] Wednesday Night's Site Evaluations

Last night, Glenn, Peter, Jenn, and myself went on a long round-trip to
evaluate the sites that are being discussed.  Our goal was to assess the
local-light situation at the sites.  If you read no further than this
sentence, I'll say that it was an unanimous conclusion that the "Gas Line"
site Steve and AJ found at Dobbins and 435th Ave. is superior in all
respects.  There were zero annoying local lights around the horizon, plenty
of room to set up scopes, and no passing traffic.  The zenith sky brightness
measured by Peter's and my Sky Quality meters ranged from 21.2 to 21.3.

On the return trip to Phoenix, we reached the I-10/I-17 stack in exactly 1
hour.  All of this was extremely easy driving, with only three miles
approaching the site being very smooth dirt road.  Kudos to Steve and AJ!
If I had my way, we'd abandon Flat Iron immediately, and start using this
site.  Before the inevitable argument that Hovatter is nearly as close comes
up, has anybody timed the drive from there to the I-10/I-17 stack for
comparison?  I'm guessing that it's in the neighborhood of 1:45.

I wish I had as rosy of a report for the site I was partial to.  It is along
Salome Road, and very easily accessible from I-10.  But as Steve and AJ
found out, this whole area is just too close, and lights from I-10 and rest
areas/truck stops ruin the experience.  We found a little nook 33 27.756N,
113 00.691W in which ironwood and palo verde trees mostly blocked the
lights, but some lights were still visible.  I would estimate that the
savings in time over Steve and AJ's site would be about 10 minutes.
Anywhere east or west of this site was just too lit up.  It's too bad, as
the aesthetic scene of Canopus passing over Saddle Mountain was pretty
amazing.

As a side note, we approached the good site from the west, as it was a way
to get around Saddle Mountain.  This entailed driving all the way to
Harquahala Valley Road past a blazing power substation.  The local lights
started being blocked by Saddle Mountain about 5 miles to the west of the
gas line site.  Since this was a school/work night, we did not make it to
the Dirt Blvd. site.

Coordinates for the site at the gas line are 33 21.863N, 113 01.904W.  But
you can't miss the white "guard rails" made out of rocks.

Tom

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