2016 26th Annual Grand Canyon Star Party In Memory Of Joe Orr
DAY THREE - The Temperatures Drop Almost Ten Degrees, But Cloudy Early On
Location: Grand Canyon Visitor Center, South Rim of Grand Canyon, AZ, about
340 miles north of home in Tucson, about 7000 ft. elevation
Weather: 90F mid-day, 82F at sunset, 48F when I quit near 11:30. Ninety
percent cloud cover during the afternoon broke up to many patchy spots and
light overcast all around until about 10 PM.
Seeing and Transparency: Transparency very occulted until late. I didn't
set up, so I can't judge the seeing but M51 looked very steady on one
monitor. Sunset winds were again moderate, but not strong enough to blow the
clouds out. Temperatures dropped a bit, still 5 degrees F above normal.
Equipment:
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
Mallincam Xterminator video system on the 10", 19" QFX LCD monitor. But
tonight, only a laser pointer.
This will be a short one. With the early heavy cloud cover, and needing
to escort several news organizations and conduct the 10 PM Constellation
Tour, I decided to have an easier night.
Dr. John Barentine, Program Manager at the International Dark Sky
Association in Tucson, AZ, was our speaker at the night's sunset talk. We
were
privileged to hear Dr. Barentine's wise light use presentation, and, as every
night raffled off Celestron First Scope. Celestron again donated eight
First Scopes for our week, thanks to my good friend for many years Kevin
Legore, head of the Focus Astronomy outreach foundation and
Celestron/Sky-Watcher USA employee. Every night, a potential future Nobel
Prize winner leaves
with something to start their night sky exploration.
When I left the auditorium to meet my first escort and interview task, the
sky was awful for a constellation tour; at best, the planets were somewhat
visible with the patchy thick clouds, but for the most part stars dimmer
than about magnitude 2.5 were lost and in spots, whole constellations would
be absent as well as Saturn. I started looking around for my CBS News
contact, but they had been clever and while we were inside for the talk, did
walk around interviews with the astronomers so I was off the hook.
Since it was after 9 PM and I had the 10 PM tour, I didn't bother setting
up and acted as a roving information source, doing mini-sky tours for groups
of visitors exploring the site. I was fortunate to have the clouds almost
completely evaporate starting about 9:55 PM, so I took my group of about
25 over to the adjacent parking lot and was able to do a high quality (for
me!) cultural tour of our home universe. We started with the planetary
lineup and the recently set three day old crescent moon to the 7:40 PM sunset
point, delineating the ecliptic plane and the path of the Sun through the
year. I swithed definitions to rename the path in Greek Zo=living, dia=Day,
cos=solar related, and Kyklos, or Cycle, so we had the Zodiacos Kyklos, the
cycle of living things for the annual cycle of daytime locations of the
sun. We shorten that to The Zodiac, with each constellation along the Sun's
annual cycle representing a living object. We had a whole lot of
exposition of the audience's "Home Universe", in the point of views of many
Native
American, Hindu, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Sumerian aspects. It was a
very enthusastic crowd for our 40 minute exploration, and I had a whole sky to
work with!
I killed time in various wanderings for about an hour, then left as one of
our Ranger's for the evening, Rader Lane, was begining his interview with
Page from CBS Morning News. It really was a very enjoyable night with the
visitors despite never uncovering the scope.
As I write this on Tuesday morning, the sky is clear and the temperatures
are predicted to be more reasonable. Another windbreaker night, thank
goodness!
It was so uplifting to have so many one-on-a-few discussions of the visible
night sky, compared to dozens at the monitor looking at a gorgeous piece
of eye candy. It felt great to know that what I was providing to them, they
can take home and appreciate the beauty of the dark night sky. Another
priceless night here on the South Rim.
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
gcsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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