Date: Saturday, January 30, 2016
Iâm woefully late getting this out, but better late than never.
Location: Catalina State Park, Catalina, AZ
Weather: mid-70s at Noon, Low 60s at sunset, 50s when we quit near 10:00
PM. Some clouds forming during the day, thinning at sunset, open sky when we
began serious observing.
Seeing and Transparency: OK, not great due to the moisture pumping in off
the west coast.
Equipment:
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
Mallincam Xterminator video system, 19" QFX LCD monitor.
This was the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Associationâs winter star party
supporting Catalina State Park. This was an unusual event in that we had no
moon or planets to get an early start on, so we and our eventual 250 or more
visitors waited for astronomical twilight to set in so we could enjoy some
viewing.
We had 10 astronomers to support the event, and we were all pretty busy.
After dark, for most of the event, I had about 35 people rotating through
my video display all night.
As the darkness was settling in, I invited any interested visitors to a
side area for a laser sky tour. We covered ecliptic, the relation to the
zodiac, all of the visible constellations, and many myths from multiple
cultures associated with the constellations and asterisms, comparing the
Pleiades,
Orion, Scorpius (not visible, but part of a similar separation legend in
Navajo to the Greek), Cassiopeia, and the Big Dipper and how they are
interpreted among Greek and Navajo cultures. We also discussed the point of
view
of the creation of the Sun, Moon, and night sky as taught by Tohono
O'odham and Navajo, and the nature of the night sky as understood by Cherokee,
Seminole, Navajo, and other cultures. It was quite a nice experience with the
visitors.
Back to the scope, I aligned on Rigel and we enjoyed M42, Orion's Nebula
for some time, discussing the nature of this stellar nursery and the Trapzium
and its generation of the emission/reflection nebula on the screen. I
used the flexibility of the imaging time selection to show, at 2.1 seconds,
the Trapezium and some of the nebulosity around the four main stars, then
upping the integration time to seven seconds for the glory of the colorful
hydrogen emission and the reflections around the nebula. Increasing the
integration to 15 seconds brought out M43, the emission nebula adjacent to
M42,
and marveled at Charles Messierâs ability to pick this item out 235 years
ago with a small telescope and the wood and coal smoke pollution.
Then we went over to Cassiopeia, and after aligning on Schedar, spent time
with The Owl Cluster, which filled the monitor. Rotating the camera
allowed it to appear upside down as the Bat, as well as ET and Johnny 5 and
other culturesâ name as the Kachina Doll.
We then went up to the Andromeda constellation for the beautiful planetary
nebula, NGC7662, the Blue Snowball. It was a blue disk over ¼â in
diameter, all alone in the view. We talked about stellar evolution and the
source
of the oxygen glow due to the white dwarf at the core.
By now, it was time to close up shop as the visitors left happy, and
educated, to the environment that is part of their home. Once again, the
Mallinccam live video system enabled showing natural wonders and performing
education for a large group of visitors. Weâll be back again next quarter!
Jim O'Connor
South Rim Coordinator
Grand Canyon Star Party
gcsp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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