2016 26th Annual Grand Canyon Star Party In Memory Of Joe Orr
DAY ONE - Great 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: 97F mid-day, 93F at sunset, 62F when we quit near 00:30. Totally
clear skies.
Seeing and Transparency: Transparency OK but recent wildfires have left a
bit of obscurration. The well above seasonal temperatures have the upper
atmosphere very unsteady. However, because of the performance of the live
video system, I kept the setup at full focal length and doubled the power in
software to 620X.
Equipment:
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
Mallincam Xterminator video system on the 10", 19" QFX LCD monitor.
First, about the name of this year's event. We honor and remember Joe
Orr, a lifelong astronomer who often participated in GCSP. Behind the scenes,
without much fanfare, Joe provided a large donation for the 2012 Grand
Canyon Association Dark Skies project. He also spent a lot of time building
and rehabilitating hiking trails at the Canyon and provided financial
support as well. He provided a portion of the funding to repair the Clark
Refractor at Lowell Observatory, made many other physical and financial aids to
parks and observatories across Texas and Arizona, and served on the board of
visitors at McDonald Observatory in Texas. He passed away far too early in
life from pancreatic cancer in late 2013. He left a significant bequest
to continue the Grand Canyon National Park's Dark Skies program, and I
personally will miss him as he did his last constellation tours for us at the
2013 Grand Canyon Star Party.
We are being baked alive. For the rest of the star party, predictions are
a minimum of high 90s, with some show two to four days at over 102F.
YIKES. That's bringing upper layer instability that hurts the image a bit,
but
we did OK.
A bit about our volunteers. Usually, I get about 90 astronomers request
the registration packs, but this year I'm at 110! And while we end up with
close to 110 or so who show up during the week, I can only imagine what
mid-week will bring. The first Saturday is usually our minimum participation
at about 35 astronomers, but tonight we had over 50.
We started off the evening with the night talk by Dean Regas, Astronomer
and Outreach head at Cincinnati Observatory as well as being the co-host of
the PBS nightly Star Gazer television short, following in the footsteps of
the late Jack Horkeimer. Dean is an awesome communicator. He presented a
fascinating unveiling of the size of the universe, starting locally with the
Earth and Moon, and using Mintaka and Stellarium, expanded the exposition
from local, then the rocky planets, out to the gas giants, the sun's long
reach and out to the Oort cloud, then local stars, our galaxy out to other
galaxies, and finally out the the full Universe we know, in many different
alternative points of view, well laced with humor and at a scale where the
elementary school children in our audience were very actively involved. An
awesome presentation, and we have him back again tonight.
I had set up the night before so that while we were indoors, my
granddaughter Karina to do the demonstrations but the sun set too late to get a
target planet before we went inside to set up the talk. I got back out to the
setup at 9 PM, swung it over to Saturn, and operated at the full f/10 of the
SCT while using the internal camera software to double the power. Saturn
was a bit boiling at over 600X, but the audince loved it. I started at
9:10 PM or so, and couldn't stop until well after midnight. With the Jupiter,
Mars, and Saturn available, I chose Saturn because Jupiter was just too
indistinct at the power I was running, while Saturn showed off the color
variation between the yellow-brown planet and the intensely white icy rings.
Crowd loved it when the seeing would snap the rings into the banded form
they display, and there was always a very striking planet shadow on the rear
ring disk. While I had plans for a couple of planetary nebulae, M13, and
several galaxies, the crowd would not let me move off of Saturn! Great
discussions, I was able to mix in the comparison of the eclipic plane with the
zodiacal interpretation. At the start we still had Gemini, so while the
image of Saturn floated etherially on the monitor, I was able to do a sky walk
using Saturn as the anchor, move through Mars and Jupiter and the remaining
Zodiacal Light for those mainline constellations, although the Zodiacal
Light wipes out Cancer the Crab. But following the ecliptic/zodiak highway,
the crowds enjoyed seeing the "why" certain constellations came in order.
Gemini to Cancer to a fantastic Leo (never got to try the M66 supernova -
too many people!), then over to Virgo and the martini glass next to Spica
and explaining the meaning of Spica as an ear of wheat, residing in the
goddess of fertility. Scorpius, and finally Sagittarius, completed the arc of
the ecliptic and demonstration of the angular tilt of the Earth's axis. As
the night wore on, different clusters of 15 or 20 visitors were interested
in different aspects of the night sky, so I was able to shift gears to the
norhern sky, work in Hindu, Navajo, Seminole, and Akimel O'odham points of
view of different approaches to what was seen. It was a tremendous blast
all night, and I must admit I've never had people clap for exposition as
they moved on, but it happened twice! All the while, Saturn, wiggly as it was
at times, pulling in people like moths.
I did have one young visitor, about six, and her parents stop by rather
late and she seemed overwhelmed by it all. Leo changed that. When I drew
the outline of the lion using a green laserr pointer, and pointed above it to
The Big Dipper, she could finally see shapes in the sky; with the Dipper
located as it is above or to the side of Polaris, in this season it is an
upside down Dipper. OR, the Elephant of Creation! And that means in some
cultures, you have to be on your best behavior because The Creator is
watching. And she could really see the lion and got very excited at going
from
the unkown mass of stars to the known figures of the lion and the elephant.
Another singularly awesome moment of awakening of a young mind. I also had
the opportunity, as the Milky Way finally rose into visibility, to go
through several non-Western cultural points of view. This is the part of
astronomy that can really bring a bit of warmth to the old heart - someone
walking away with a new view of their home universe.
You know you've done OK when they walk away looking up, not just straight
ahead. All with Saturn patiently waiting to show off it's own unique
character.
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
gcsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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