2015 25th Annual Grand Canyon Star Party - DAY EIGHT â One More Year In The
Bag
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 80s at Noon, Low 90s at sunset, Around 60 when I quit near 00:30
AM. Generally clear and hot.
Seeing and Transparency: Another average night, not as good as last year with
higher moisture and possible fires toward California, and pine pollination
season continues.
Equipment:
Orion 90mm f/5.56 ShortTube refractor on a Sky View Pro EQ mount with the added
motor kit.
Mallincam Junior Pro video system and 19" QFX LCD monitor on the 90mm scope for
night use.
Today was the final day pot luck at beautiful Shoshone Point. Since we are
still under an advisory for high heat, attendance was lower than usual. The
astronomers who did not participate missed a nice final chance to get together.
It was especially uplifting to see that Dean Ketelsen could make the final two
nights of this year's event. As the founder and leader of the Grand Canyon
Star Party for the first 19 years, his 25 year string of attendance is intact.
We went to the site for the final time. Personally, it was depressing to have
the Atlas mount with the 10" SCT out of the game, but I was glad I had brought
the 90mm ShortTube as a backup. At least I had something to collect and show
the photons from off our world and open a small part of the universe for our
visitors. It did not take long to uncover the setup and get the three day old
moon in the monitor for the night.
Dennis Young, from the Sirius Lookers in Sedona, is our presenter at tonight's
sunset talk, presenting a set of phenominally beautiful combinations of scenic
geological views with astronomical themes, comets passing by some of the
spectacular red rock formations in Sedona, and other unique geological
locations in Arizona, demonstrating a variety of lighting tools to bring out
the beauty of sky and land, water and rock, cactus and comets. My
demonstration computer for some reason had trouble reading the images from the
source media, so it looks like I have some homework to do to get the show right
for the next time.
After an hour and a half away from the setup, there was the crescent moon still
in the monitor. The next two hours was a lot of fun, teaching the evolution of
the moon, past and future, and opening a bit of imagination on the craters in
view. This was the enjoyable part of outreach, challenging imagination while
demonstrating reality. Eventually, the moon would approach the horizon.
Rather than jump onto something else, I let the screen show the nature of light
propagation in the atmosphere. The lower that Luna sank, the more the upper
ranges of the visible light was scattered, leaving the red end of the spectrum
to be observed.
As the moon set, and the remaining image lost any distinction, it was time to
move on. I thought I would see how the 90mm f/5.56. The tiny image was
disappointing, then I remembered that for the moon, I had a 0.5X focal reducer
still installed in order to get the lunar image to match the monitor field. I
removed the reducer, found the new focus, and although the image was certainly
larger, still not to my enjoyment. So I added a 2X Barlow to the chain.
However, the optical train in this setup has so much slop it was impossible to
manage. If I put an eyepiece in the system I could finally get an alignment,
but then adding the weight of the video system would not acquire the image.
Once it did, even despite the moderate natural travel and the tube extension I
built out of an old barlow I could not get enough back focus to bring the image
in, if it was, in fact, in view at all. After about 90 minutes of fussing over
this, I declared victory for this year and started the packup.
Before finally dismantling the setup, I went down to John Suscavage's setup, a
C8 with the same version of Mallincam Junior as I was using. He had the
Triffid looking incredibly beautiful in his small monitor, so crisp and color
perfect. I wish I would have thought to hand my Xterminator over for his use;
with my 90mm the tail weight was too heavy for me to use.
Once again, grandkids Karina, Stephen, and Andrew have been awesome, helping me
and the Rangers with innumerable tasks. I loaded the 90mm setup into the
truck, saving the major repack for the next morning.
We are staying an extra day to recover from the week, so the next morning Susan
took the kids down to Phoenix for their flight back to Colorado Springs while I
organized the repacking of the four telescopes. I REALLY missed them then! But
eventually I got the 18" f/5, 10" SCT, dead duck Atlas EQ-G, 90mm ShortTube,
Skyview GEM, and Lunt LS60-THa into various nooks, corners, and spaces. Time
to search for a repair plan on the Atlas, have a real dinner, and get some
sleep for the trip home.
Once again it has been such a great experience to work with the public, observe
the tremendous capability of the Interpretive Rangers and enjoy the growth and
learning of my own grandchildren and the young Ranger Aids. As always, I wish
we were starting tomorrow.
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
gcsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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