GCSP_Observing_Report_South_Rim_Day_Six

Night Six was again similar to previous nights, yet unique (good grief,
that's trite).

Setup was a little more hectic. Dinner at Maswick Lodge and shuttle ride to
Yavapai Observation Station took a lot longer than planned; by the time we
got to the parking area it was past 6 PM. That made acquiring sufficient
space for the scope, ladder, and work table challenging. Deborah graciously
moved her C8 over to accomodate Derrick (my big guy). It worked out,
although it got a little dicey later as Jupiter's transition pulled the
scope and ladder so close to the table that the traffic got very congested
in the dark. In the end, there are about 10 of us crowded into seven parking
slots. It's not too difficult for the two C11s, the C8, 10" LX200, and 8"
LX200, but for the 10" Discovery and Orion tube dobs, and three large truss
dobs, getting enough swing room plus space where anywhere from 30 to 100
people can weave through and co-mingle is a real challenge but it's working
out.

The wind finally calmed down nicely. However, there have been several
clusters of wildfires in the area all week. The wind patterns have changed,
however, so that as sunset is looming, there is a sickly yellow-brown
overcast to the east and northeast. It ended up noticeably worsening the
seeing and transparency for the night. Made it merely excellent.

From around 7:30 to after 9:30, I hung with Jupiter. The GRS did its
meridian crossing at 8:50 local time, so we had a good view of it the whole
time. Once again I used the 9mm Nagler for a 254X view. Prior to sunset,
about two out of five visiors are detecting the spot as it is slowly
rotating into view. For the hour around the meridian crossing the spot is
easily visible, with the detection rate rising to 100% by 20 minutes after
sundown. When at the meridian, the spot is like a creamy polka-dot. Nearer
to the limbs, it's detected as a break in the line of the equtorial belt;
then the brain pulls out the spot margins. It seems that the non-tracking
dob is an asset to detection of the spot. It takes about 45 seconds for the
planetary image to transit the field of view; for most folks I'm pulling the
image to one edge of the eyepiece, and it's taking them about 10-15 seconds
to see the break in the belt, then the spot. I tried using a bit of averted
vision as I would re-align, and it was a similar effect; as the rods in the
eye got engaged, they detected the contrast of the spot margin or loss of
belt continuity while the cones were not so capable. It ended up being a
very successful display, with the image size again drawing raves; their
other views are generally at 90X, so at this scope they are really having a
good time. In fifteen years of observing, I'd only seen GRS twice. These
folks will have a good memory to take with them, and so will I. But, by
9:30, the problematic seeing was softening Jupiter to the point where even I
had trouble seeing banding.

While showing Jupiter, spouse Susan came up and was very excited. Every
night she walks up to the Canyon rim (not more than 300 steps from us!) and
takes sunset photos. The texture and shading changes moment by moment as the
sun disappears behind the sharp edge of the Grand Canyon. She had set her
Canon EOS SLR to Sport mode; it takes a series of shots in succession. She
thinks she has a Green Flash! When we lived in the Pacific, we used to try
to catch them at sunset, but only ever got one on film. And wouldn't you
know it, the film processing equipment here is broken. Won't see 'em until
next week.

As the night progressed, I noticed the red glow from the Sky Commander DSC
controller. Funny, I didn't remember starting it up. Then, checking the
display, it was showing the double star that was the last item I checked the
night before. DOH! I had put it away without turning it off! And it would
die later. Bless those spare batteries.

Next, a succession of galactic views. First, we caught the last gasps of
Sombrero as it was setting. I hopped back up to Berenices Hairclip. Both
were nice, but nothing like the crisp, high resolution views of prior
nights. So, around 10:30, as the crowd was dissipating down to two or three
at a time coming by my scope, I went over to the candy box of galaxies
beween Leo, Coma Berenices, and Virgo. I started out on M84, the head of
Markharian's Chain, running about a degree and a half down to M87, roughly
on a line between Leo's Denebola (Tail of Leo) to Vindamatrix in Virgo. I
tried a trick I've used for myself when observing the Chain. I'd start by
centering the 22mm (0.62 deg FOV) on the four galaxies centered on NGC4387
(Mag 12.1) and including M84, M86, and NGC4388. The latter three are
distributed nearly equally around the rim of the FOV. While each visitor
would look at the field of galaxies, I'd gently lift the nose of the dob and
let the chain drift through the field. There is actually a Y in the string
of galaxies, so I went purely vertical down the field that was there at
around 10:30; that missed the bright group around M87, but it still brought
up to 14 galaxies drifting through. Could never have done that with the
early night crowd, but with the sparse group coming through it worked very
well. Did this stunt for about 50 folks, and from their immediate reactions
I think they were really surprised at seeing all those galaxies. With an
equatorial mount, a similar effect can be seen by starting out at M84 and
slewing in increasing RA; this will take the view down the arm including
M87. Fewer galaxies down this path, though.

I just thought of something amusing happened earlier in the night. About a
third of our "customers" are foreign visitors. A young Japanese girl REALLY
wanted to look at Vega. It was the first star we noticed popping out
(Arcturus is overhead at sunset, and not many folks are looking up there).
As she was taking the 2-300 yard walk down the row of scopes, she'd heard
someone call Vega a diamond; she also apparently heard something about a
Ring that could be seen in the area. She absoultely HAD to look at the
diamond. She didn't care at all about Jupiter! So I slewed over to the
screamingly bright Vega at 254X, and let her look. She boke out into a huge
grin and kept saying Diamond Ring, Diamond Ring, pointing at her ring finger
(with an engagement ring!) and walked away all bubbling with excitement.
Didn't have the heart to say it would take about another hour to see the
REAL Ring. She would not have understood me, anyway. She went away toward
the shuttle bus, and her day was complete. What a joy to make someone so
happy, even it it's not what she thought it was.

By now it was after 11 PM and the shuttle buses were no longer running, so
our only visitors were those who had parked along the nearby roads; maybe a
dozen total people wandering through. A family of three driving through from
Las Vegas stopped by; I didn't see any other visitors around, so I decided
to give a better show than just a look at one or two items. After they saw
the galaxy demo, I was going to hop over to Sagittarius for the eye candy.
That's when the DSCs gave up the ghost. I did a battery swap, and needed to
realign since I planned on staying long after they left for some eastern
quadrant DSO hops. I started with Polaris; it's always a nice example to
introduce double stars. The dim blue companion is quite a contrast. After a
fast jump over to Arcturus for alignment, I went over to Albireo. When I
only have a few visitors, I use this opportunity to explain the Summer
Triangle, the Northern Cross, and how the IAU codified the constellations
and settled on formalizing the Arabic names for the bright stars. Albireo
was quite a surprise! So I finished the multi-star demo with a hop to
Mizar/Alcor, and the nice dim blue buddy between them. While up there, I
went over to M51 which was a real knockout. That part of the sky was clear,
and again the distored arm showed the effects of the prior pass-by of the
companion galaxy.

On to Sagittarius, where I put in the 22mm with an Ultra High Contrast
filter. Once again, the swan was shedding feathers all over the view. Then
Lagoon, where we talked about the open cluster forming at one edge and the
resulting energy lighting up the nebula and providing the compression wave
that is triggering successive star formations. The end of the night was on
M22. I put the unaided 9mm back in, and it filled the view while we talked
about globular clusters. After the show, they said they'll be back for the
next night.

As they were leaving, I saw it was about 1230. I heard the telltale clacks
of equipment cases being deployed as most of us were taking stuff down. I
was going to start my personal adventures, but my brain just wouldn't work.
So I joined the exodus. Forty-five minutes later, I was packed up. There
were maybe 10 or 15 obbservers left at the top of the row. At our end, all
but two of us were packing up.

We'll probably stay one more night; we'll leave Saturday early, in time to
get back to Tucson for the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association deep sky
night at Empire Ranch/Las Cienegas and then a day to crash before work on
Monday. It may be a few days before the final report; maybe I'll wait for
the pictures of the Green Flash!

Keep Looking Up ...

--------------------

Jim

A Bad Night With A Telescope

Beats A Good Night Doing Anything Else

Tectron 18" Truss Dob.

Meade 10" LX-5 SCT/Atlas-G

Orion 90mm refractor,

Meade 10" Starfinder Newt,

Celestron 10x50 Ultima Pro