[AZ-Observing] Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY ONE - A Pretty Good Start

  • From: Skylook123@xxxxxxx
  • To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:26:40 -0400 (EDT)

Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY ONE - A Pretty Good Start
 
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, 75 at sunset, 50s when we quit at 11 PM. Clear skies, 
 but the wind picked up around 9:45 to about 8 - 15 MPH gusts.
 
Seeing and Transparency: Started good, but deteriorated a little bit due to 
 the winds.
 
Equipment: 
18â?? f/5 2286mm Teeter Telescope newtonian truss dob, Sky  Commander DSCs
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
 
Starting our second year at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, some changes  
were made in our adventure. First, the Rangers marked off a telescope-free 
path  down the middle of the parking lot for foot traffic. Second, to improve 
our  communications among ourselves, we are having an informal gathering at 
7 PM for  popsicles and conversation. I think it helps put a more community 
aspect on what  we are doing.
 
The trip up was uneventful, but now there are FIVE of us travelling up.  
Thirteen year old grandson Stephan has been added to the now 18 year old 
Jessica  on the 10" Atlas and 15 year old Karina on the 18" Teeter. I need to 
break in  Stephan on the 90mm Orion ShortTube with its Skyview mount. Five 
people, four  telescopes and an 8 night stay make for a packed station wagon, 
packed pickup,  and an external rack on the trailer hitch.
 
We came up on Friday night and did dry runs on the theater setup and  
finished the light reduction operations. All looks well for the future.
 
Saturday was the usual running around getting things organized. I found out 
 I forgot one of the roll up tables I bring, the one I use in the theater 
for  supporting the laptop that has all the presentations. Ginger Applegarth, 
who has  worked with our Ranger coordinator Marker Marshall since last GCSP 
to try to  improve the information distribution for the new volunteers 
every year called to  say she and Alan were running late and did I need 
anything, because they were  stopping at Walmart. Table problem solved. What 
Ginger 
is doing is a quantum  leap, I think, in helping bridge the gap in the 
returning vets and the relative  newcomers. For health reasons, Alan and Ginger 
now need to travel in a longer RV  so we had sufficient camping slots that we 
could put then in one of the handicap  accessible spaces and they can have 
an information table set up for all of the  volunteer so check out what's 
going on. And this year I sent out the Welcome and  Information package 
identifying where the campsites are located. As many as two  thirds of our 
volunteers are not housed in Mather Campground, so I identified  the location 
and 
campsites so we can improve getting to know each other. Having  an 
"Information Central" in the campground, and Marker providing the popsicle  
session 
each night, should ease the load on new folks trying to fit in.
 
Unfortunately, we are missing two of our stalwart participants, Derald Nye  
and Erich Karkoshka. I really do miss both of their presences. We will have 
to  carry on as best we can.
 
We got the two big scopes set up, and headed over to the theater at 7:30 to 
 get ready for the night talk. We are now limited to 233 total bodies in 
the  facility, so with the three of us up front, we no longer have 280+ SRO 
throng.  With everything ready to rock and roll, we were off and running. The 
talk was a  new one, given by Interpretive Ranger Laura Jevtich who normally 
is assigned to  Desert View and does night sky interpretation there. Her 
talk was a  comprehensive look at Supernovas - how the universe evolved, and a 
very engaging  way of demonstrating the life cycle of stars. Her talk then 
went into the  elements generated through the engergy released, and the 
neutron star or black  hole remainder. The interesting wrinkle was that she had 
every person coming in  get a square of paper with an element. The color of 
the paper was an indicator  of the source of the element. Laura then went 
through a list of items and  whether they could exist without a supernova - 
jewelry, electronics, the Sun,  buildings, the Earth, the earth's atmosphere, 
having peope hold up the cards as  she read off different element 
constituents. A great involvement of the  audience. She also had an interesting 
presentation of candidate stars for  supernova and hypernova/gama ray burst 
status, and their distances. Looks like  we're safe for now. 
 
I ran out at the end to start the first constellation tour at 9 PM, with  
Laura set for the 9:30 and 10 PM events. These are always fun, introducing 
the  visitors to the structure of the sky, and the myths and science  
intermingled.
 
So, it was 9:45 before I got back to the scopes. Not much to report. Karina 
 was doing OK on the Ring and Mizar, but the Jessica and the Atlas were in 
a bit  of trouble. I had adjusted the latitude change from Tucson in the 
daylight, in  the wrong direction! She finally stuck it on Polaris and did a 
double star show  and tell, which she usually does very well. Five minutes 
after I got there, the  wind started gusting and driving the Teeter around, so 
between that and the  Atlas in another universe, it took an hour of fussing 
to stow the Teeter and to  get all of the bugs worked out and realign 
everything. It should be OK for  tonight. The good news is that after I finally 
got the polar alignment  straightened out, it nailed M6 in Sagittarius and M51 
in Coma Berenices dead  center so we should be OK for tomorrow night. I'm 
doing my usual talk on what's  up in the sky, a simple, introductory sentance 
or three on the sun, moon, each  planet, clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and 
comets. Then Laura will do the first  two constellation tours so I can make 
sure the kids are OK with the scopes, and  I'll do the last tour.
 
The one positive aspect of having to scramble with both telescopes is to  
listen to Paul Lorenz who was set up next to us. It is always entertaining 
and  informative to hear Paul describe his targets to his visitors; last night 
it was  M82, M51, and The Veil Nebula. So I was actually moving a little 
slower than  usual, enjoying Paul's interaction with the crowd.
 
Finally, it was great to see Joe Bergeron again, our space artist from New  
York who has designed every one of our t-shirts for GCSP. 
 
The adventure begins! 
 
--------------------
Jim 
South Rim Coordinator 
Grand Canyon Star  Party 
gcsp[at]tucsonastronomy.org 
 
 
 
Jim  O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star  Party
gcsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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