[AZ-Observing] Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY TWO - Close To Perfect
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- Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 18:07:00 -0400 (EDT)
Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY TWO - Close To Perfect
Location: Grand Canyon Visitor Center, South Rim of Grand Canyon, AZ, about
340 miles north of home in Tucson, about 7000 ft elevation
Weather: Mid 70s at Noon, Low 70s at sunset, 40ish when we quit near
Midnight. Patchy clouds during the day, clearing after sunset, gusts around 20
mph until around 9:30 PM.
Seeing and Transparency: The gusts early on made it hard for me to judge,
but seemed very good in the few early moments of calm. I again held Saturn
in video at over 620X, a feature of the aperture and speed of the big SCT
combined with the effective focal length of the MCJR PRO, but great focus was
really impossible. Way over driving the instrument.
Equipment:
18â f/5 2286mm Teeter Telescope newtonian truss dob, Sky Commander DSCs
(unused again due to gusts)
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
Mallincam Junior PRO video system on the 10", 19" QFX LCD monitor.
Tonight started in a very disappointing way due to the weather, but despite
the sleep deprivation and low temps, it became my best night I can every
recall with a telescope, all due to the astounding performance of the
camera, when nailing the settings.
We had our annual pizza party in the campground, and it was great to see
everyone again. Our speaker for the two nights, Dr. James W. Rice, came and
I stayed an hour and a half longer than I planned. I had thought about
running out and setting up the Lunt for some daytime public outreach, but it
was so fascinating to listen to Jim's historical information I just couldn't
break away from the picnic table. And then I noticed that the clouds had
blown in anyway, so it was win-win.
With sunset so late now that we are at the end of June, the planets have
not yet become visible when we need to go into the theater to get ready for
the night talk so my setup was inert when we went in, leaving Jack Huerkamp
as the lone video setup. I came out and jumped on Saturn and we were
showing the planet in about 10 minutes.
I shut things down so I could run over and do the 10 PM constellation
tour. Went great, folks loved it, and I headed back to the scope.
Being so frustrated at looking over my shoulder at the tour-de-force that
Jack was showing, all over Sagittarius, Sombrero, Whirlpool, on and on, I
said what the heck, and redid the alignment, this time using the MCJR PRO and
cross hairs on the monitor, at 620X. I used a three star to account for
any cone error in the setup and used Merak, Spica, and Vega. Then I
configured the system for f/3.2 to deep sky, and recentered on Vega to adjust
focus at the new light path. I set the camera for 2.1 seconds integration
time
to pick out the trace of The Ring, selected it, and holy cow, dead center.
I installed the wireless controller, upped the integration time to five
seconds, and the beautiful object was there. I realized I still had AGC
Off, so I set it at 3, zoom to 1.8, and adjusted the white balance and an
awesome Ring was alive, the size of a nickel in the monitor, with BOTH central
stars visible.
Then, magic. I selected the Dumbbell, and bang on dead center. I set the
integration to seven seconds, and the beauty of the object was not to be
believed. In the 19" monitor, it filled a third of the vertical space and
about 20% of horizontal. The diaphanous curtain of the giant apple core was
one of the best views I have ever seen in astronomy. The air temperature
was down aroun 45 degrees by now when I noticed one other fantastic effect;
only three or four hot pixels. Down in Tucson, there would have been one
hundred or more. No filters, no hot pixel elimination, no dark flat,
nothing...just one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life in
astronomy.
Meanwhile, Jack was having some problems with his Celestron mount similar
to what I've had for a year or more with my Atlas, but somewhat worse. In
my case, being on my third hand controller in seven years, I sometimes get
all black squares across my display face. The only way to reset is to pull
the cable and reinstall, and the screen comes back but it's lost alignment
data. It does remember stepper motor positions, so it can be parked, or
realigned. In Jack's case, his hand controller was giving him a blank
screen, then reinitializing so he had to go through a realignment. His
recovery, though, is much quicker than mine because of his Celestron automated
alignment routine, while mine uses the Synta firmware that takes what seems
like
forever.
All in all, a great ending, ready for Monday and better weather
--------------------
Jim
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
gcsp[at]tucsonastronomy.org
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