[AZ-Observing] GCSP Day Three from Jim O'Conner
- From: Andrew Cooper <acooper@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: TAAA Forum <taaaforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, AZ-Observing <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 18:21:03 -0700
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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