[AZ-Observing] Grand Canyon Star Party
- From: "Jennifer Polakis" <m24@xxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:52:47 -0700
Tom and I are just back from the GCSP.
Friday night we camped/observed in the S. Kaibab about 10 miles outside of the
park boundary. The Sky Quality Meter registered 21.7 @ 9:30. Mostly just
surfin' with the Pocket Sky Atlas & Celestial Portraits we ran into some really
beautiful sites. My favorite of the evening was The Siamese Twins N4567/68 in
Virgo, in the same 0.5degree field with N4564. There's a nice Sloan Digital
Sky Survey picture of the twins on the WIKISKY Stan was just mentioning:
http://www.wikisky.org/?object=NGC4567&img_source=SDSS I wish I had an extra
lifetime to study that trainwreck! Do any of you astrophysicists out there
happen to know if their merger/merging would/will effect their inclinations?
Last night was the first of 7 nights of Grand Canyon Star Party. It's such a
great event, a dark sky AND Grand Canyon--if there's any way possible to make
it up there for a night or more, just do it! Tom and I set up in the "lower
field" at Yavapai Point--Although less of the public make it down there from
the major line of scopes in the parking lot above, those that do come down
generally stick around and chat and learn and look at 4 or 5 objects. We
showed the sky to ~40 folks; Steve and Rosie Dodder who were stationed in the
main parking lot showed the sky to >170 people. The SQM registered 21.7 at
nightfall, and 21.4 when it considered the Milky Way into the equation. Later
in the evening when the public had gone to bed, we had time for observing up
some great objects. My favorite for Saturday night is a close pair of
globulars in Sagittarius just above the point of the tea spout, N6528 and
N6522. In 0.5 degree field @ low power they appeared as a ghostly blank
staring pair of eyes imploring you to go to bed because it's 2am! So I did.
Today we made the annual run into Tusayn to pick up a load of pizzas for the
SAC sponsored lunch before heading back to the light dome where my email
greeted me with a wonderful msg from David Healy: I'm now an asteroid! I
think it's been one great weekend!
Jennipolakis
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