A Night At The Peace Garden

[Skylook123]

I thought I'd jot down a few notes about last night's support of the Tucson Sunnyside Neighborhood Association's annual holiday event at the Peace Garden, a zone of serenity in a low income, disadvantaged area.

Lyle Johnsen is back for the season and along with Byron Skinner and me we joined Santa and took part in the Sunnyside neighborhood gathering. Because of the cold temperatures, it was not nearly as well attended as the previous events we've had there, but the quality of the show and tell did not suffer and the attendance, though sparse, was as always a great group to work with. This is of course a voluntary event, not a school assignment, so our customers want to be there and eagerly take in whatever we can provide. As always, our hosts put on a festive environment with lots of hot chocolate, wonderful luminaria (small paper bags with a little sand for weight and small votive candles)  on all of the walking paths, and a rolling wagon cart to help us get our equipment to the setup location and back to our vehicles.

Peace Garden is one of our toughest venues to work within, since it is a small, tightly compressed, beautifully treed area. We set up on the south border of the area so that each of us got a line of sight on some objects to view. We were able to get the usual standbys, the Moon, Venus, Albireo, The Orion Nebula, Jupiter, and some other targets for the two and a half hours we were there. Once again I set up for live video with a Mallincam Junior PRO since a majority of the audience would be children, and the video allowed me to stay on the moon and talk and point to features like the Lunar Poodle (Sea of Serenity, Sea of Tranquility, Sea of Fecundity, and Sea of Crises that looks like a standard poodle), a barely becoming illuminated Lunar Rabbit, and, thanks to Bob Gilroy showing me one night, a really strongly visible Lady in the Moon (my wife thinks it looks more like Elvis). With children in the majority, the Lunar Poodle dominates the crater and other feature discussions, but the adults liked the Lady in the Moon as well as seeing the Apollo landing sites (I tend to stick with Apollo 11 and Apollo 17, first and last landings). I worked at f/3.1 in the big SCT to get the field of view down to enclose the majority of the moon in the 16" monitor. I also worked with several levels of filtration and shutter speed to bring out some contrasts at crater rims, and with a 70% lunar filter and a 1/3000 ALC setting, Tycho and Copernicus really jumped out although it darkened the Lunar Rabbit almost out of existence. The live video method turned out to work great, since the vast majority of the visitors were elementary school or even preschool. I recently learned that the eye to brain tight focus detail processing doesn't really develop in children until around six years of age, sometimes older, so that explains why we often have trouble with the youngest of our guests seeing what we want them to see in an eyepiece. The monitor overcomes that development detail. It worked just fine in the monitor. A third of my customers seemed to be six years of age or younger, and all were instantaneously identifying the Poodle in the screen.

Although we usually have a line of five to ten visitors on warmer nights here, the cold kept the crowd to what seemed to be 10% of my usual experience. Pity, because the Association does so much to make this a nice experience. None of the usual foot patrol anti-gang police officers were there, which was appropriate since we didn't have the usual dozens of teens present. With the sparse crowd, I took advantage of a lull and fully aligned the Atlas EQ-G and went from the Moon over to my first try ever at the Orion Nebula and it nailed it dead on. I added the wireless receiver to the camera to be able to switch over, from fast shutter speed on the bright Moon to integration on the nebula. In the cold, every battery (wireless controller, wireless receiver, laser pointer, Canon Powershot camera for crowd and venue pics, and even my red head lamp) gave up the ghost but I travel with a virtual battery supply store, so I swapped out the receiver and controller batteries and it was game on. I took off half of the focal reduction, up to f/6.3, and made on-the-fly adjustments to tweak gain, gamma, and of course switching off the shutter ALC and activating the integration time. Longer to type than to do. And M42 filled over half of the monitor, in gorgeous color. I had set the integration time at four seconds, but should have used two seconds since the Trapezium blew out the center. But the outer regions were awesome in color, so I just left it alone. Not bad for my first try with that object. So now I've done The Ring at TIMPA, and M42 last night. Almost starting to learn this system!

Much more low key than prior events at Peace Garden, and Lyle did a great Venus exposition while Byron did quite a tour of the Double Cluster, Albireo, Jupiter, and more (at least he could lift his refractor and move it around the area to get objects through holes in the tree branches) but one can't get over the great service the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association provides to its community. It is a real privilege to help them bring this wonderful environment to an economically challenged area. They are really special people. As are the visitors, whose grins and thanks were flowing constantly. Personally, I just love doing this event and I've only missed two in the last seven years.

Oh, and during a lull we were discussing some of the constellation lore, so next year they want to move off to the athletic field to the south after sunset and start of with a cultural constellation tour/sky walk. That will be a real treat to do.

Jim O'Connor

Vice President, TAAA

South Rim Coordinator, Grand Canyon Star Party

gcsp@tucsonastronomy.org

[Special K]

That's really good work Jim and enjoyed reading about your experience. That's a shame the cold affected attendance as maybe the seeing would be even better at lower temps? However it must be a rewarding experience to have people enthusiastic about the presentation and getting something out of it. The constellation tour sounds like a fun trip! Well done and clear skies.

[Skylook123]

That's really good work Jim and enjoyed reading about your experience. That's a shame the cold affected attendance as maybe the seeing would be even better at lower temps? However it must be a rewarding experience to have people enthusiastic about the presentation and getting something out of it. The constellation tour sounds like a fun trip! Well done and clear skies.

Thanks for reading, and for the comments.  Usually down here in the Sonoran Desert, the temperatures would be in the upper 60s F for the event, but we were at 43 F just after sunset.  Jackets?  Coats?  What are those?   

This is an extremely special location in the community.  Many years ago, children themselves did most of the work, with the leadership of the local Neighborhood Association, of planting the small gardens and brick walkways under the young sagebrush and mesquite trees that have, over the last few decades, grown quite high.  The children and parent mentors wanted, well, a Peace Garden.  The area is extremely economically depressed, and violent crime is a way of life. I listen to police radio as a hobby, and in our area of roughly 1,000,000 population, one third of the calls are within ten city blocks of this location.   When we have our usual several hundred children and parents and grandparents drop in, most of the adults do not speak English but the smiles and hugs we get says it all.  We did not have the usual foot patrol officers present since the crowd was so small due to the cold, but the children and parents almost worship the officers, and the officers are so positive with them.  Several years ago, a sergeant in the patrol took me aside to thank us for the support - just this once a year event, he said, "gives them something to dream about instead of flying knives and bullets."  Wow.  If the children come in to help in the gardens or help clean the walkways for a few hours on a Saturday, they can get their bicycles fixed free of charge, or if they can't afford bicycles, a few days work and one built from donated parts will appear with their name on it.  This really is a Children's Peace Garden.  I also do astronomy outreach in some of the schools in the district, and the teachers and children take the concepts of non-violence and peace extremely seriously.  Folks here on SGL  probably know I do a lot of astronomy outreach, up to ten events each month, including coordinating the annual Grand Canyon Star Party for 100+ astronomers with over 70,000 visitor contacts each year, but this one event is truly my favorite of all.   To quote a good friend's philosophy on public outreach, "You Never Know What One Life You'll Touch."  Here, we touch so many!  So I hope all the readers here will realize what they have a chance to do in their own community, with just a little show and tell.  It matters.

[Beulah]

Thank you for the brilliant report, I really enjoyed reading it this morning.

[cotterless45]

Lovely, brightened up a windy wet morning, Nick.

[Special K]

I'd like to shake your hand, Jim, but I'm a little far away!  I might make it as far as Mojave Valley at the end of the month, but can't venture any further!  Again, hat's off to you and your colleagues   The greatest gestures in life really are the free ones.  I have yet to meet anyone who isn't wow'ed even a little when looking through the scope............even the wife!

The Grand Canyon Star Party sounds like a hoot.  The humidity here in the UK is very very high so we're all poised at the back door with scopes-a-ready at the slighest sniff of a clear sky!  So 43F is lower than expected?  I'm wondering what to expect overnight in Mojave and seems to be around that temp.  Forecast and avg temps for December look to be around 43F...........balmy!  Cold enough to keep the rattlers in their dens I hope 

[Skylook123]

Thanks, all, for the kind words.  GCSP is really a circus and a half.  Everyone of the visitors are thrilled, the astronomers enjoy the sharing, and, after all, we're at 7000 feet with out 16% humidity - SO many stars and naked eye Messier objects.

Rattlesnakes have been in hibernation for the last five weeks or so.  Makes me wonder what the scorpions are doing.  I did learn a few months ago that while the Western Diamondback rattlesnakes avoid humans if possible, and unless they are in the pre-molting state and blind they will warn before striking, the Mojave rattlers are notable longer and fatter snakes, and nastier, and will sometimes go after humans they detect and sometimes will not rattle before hitting the target.  Oh Joy.