[AZ-Observing] Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY THREE - Another Great One
- From: Skylook123@xxxxxxx
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:29:34 -0400 (EDT)
Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY THREE - Another Great One
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, 78 at sunset, 50 when we quit at 11 PM. Clear skies,
terrible winds up to 35+ MPH all day, although it did calm down after about
8:30PM.
Seeing and Transparency: Both still suffering a bit. Still good skies,
but distant fires and the awful winds are really apparent..
Equipment:
18â?? f/5 2286mm Teeter Telescope newtonian truss dob, Sky Commander DSCs
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
Lunt LS60THa
90mm Orion ShortTube
The daytime was interesting, in a nuissance sort of way. I reported
yesterday about slow/inoperative wireless. Somehow the Grand Canyon National
Park's internet connection got corrupted by a DNS kidnapping, and the wireless
was out to lunch until, well, lunch!
We got to the setup spot early, so I set up two solar scopes: the 90mm with
white light, and the Lunt. Nice views in both, not much in the way of
foot traffic since it was in the middle of the astronomers setting up for the
evening. I finally swapped out the Lunt for the usual 10" SCT for the
night, and capped the 90mm. We were not setting up the 18" due to the winds,
so I thought I'd use the 90mm for some wide field later in the evening.
I spent a bit of the morning studying the resume of Bill Wren, our speaker
last night. He is Special Assistant to the Superintendent at University of
Texas Austin's McDonald Observatory, founding member of the UT McDonald
Observatory Supernova Search Team and discoverer of four Supernovas in five
years, two garnering Nova awards from the American Association of Variable
Star Observers. Coauthor of the paper â??Preserving McDonald Observatory's
Dark Night Skyâ??, Bill is a strong proponent of preserving the night sky.
His topic was Taking Back The Night, a tremendous presentation of the
impacts of light impingement and bad lighting design, corrective actions, and
motivation to do the right things for keeping the light use effective,
efficient, and appropriate.
The talk was extremely well received, but went well outside our window of
time. Bill is an awesome speaker; I lost track of the time as his
presentation led us through the entire concept of reclaiming the night sky,
especially the WHY. It was a scramble for Laura to get to the Constellation
Tour
location in time to start the 9PM walk around the sky.
Back at the scopes, the wind was too high to use the 18" so it stayed
packed up and Karina went back to the Lodge, but Jessica had taught herself how
to do a two star alignment with the Synta hand controller on the Atlas, and
found the GOTOs OK, but polar alignment was still off. Once again, she
stayed on Mizar. Amazing how excited the visitors get when learning about
the lore of Mizar from multiple cultures while waiting in line, then actually
seeing the orientation in the eyepiece and getting the color/temperature
and Mizar double-double kind of information. The blue star nearby looks
dim, but with most of its light in the UV, it could actually be brighter.
The temperature had dropped precipitously with the sun. I had left my
jacket in the truck, so I came out from the night talk in tshirt and shorts and
said never again would I not change into big boy clothes. When I got to
the scopes, I tried the 90mm, which I've only used for solar for the last
few years. Then I remembered why; the finder was too close to the OTA, and
really tough to use in a crowd. Beautiful views, but finding anything on
the plain vanilla no utilities mount was just not the right thing to do.
And with a cold, blustery evening and not picking up my jacket, I was ready
for a diversion. There were probably about 15 people standing around me, and
I heard a visitor ask a question about where to find the Little Dipper.
Rescued! I gave up on the 90mm and started a sky tour. I was scheduled to
do the 10PM Constellation Tour, why not do a dry run? So for twenty
minutes the fifteen or so of us walked around the sky with science and
mythology
mixed together.
The 10PM constellation tour went extremely well. Lively group. Finished
up about 10:35PM, walked back past the truck and grabbed a winter coat, and
stowed the 10" for the night. Visitors had evaporated in the chill night,
so I just ended the ops on the scope. This time I used a big tarp as a
cover and didn't disassemble the whole thing. Had a great conversation time
with Paul Lorenz, got back to the room at around 11:30. I'm almost thawed
out!
Tonight will be a great topic - our Interpretive Ranger Marker Marshall
will be doing her Starry, Starry Nights At The Grand Canyon. I learn a lot
every time I see it.
I'm not using a scope again this year, and having more fun with the
visitors than I could imagine.
--------------------
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
gcsp[at]tucsonastronomy.org
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