Two Nights of Road Trip Outreach

[Skylook123]

June 23 and 24, Road Trip Outreach: More Lessons Learned

Location: Willowick and North Olmsted, OH, south of Lake Erie

Weather: Both nights, low-80s at 9 PM sundown, low 70s when we quit near 11:30 PM. Clear skies all the first day, but recent high humidity accentuated the urban light pollution. Second day and night had increasingly thick high stratus in long wisps with some clear areas, becoming total overcast by the time we quit

Seeing and Transparency: Seeing was very stable, but transparency was a mess both nights.  On night one, between the urban light pollution and a local minor league baseball team setting off fireworks on home runs and the end of the game made the sky a psychedelic landscape.  Night two, different town, but the sky become progressively unusable

Equipment:
10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount
Mallincam Xterminator video system,19" QFX LCD monitor.

My wife Susan and I have left the Arizona monsoons and are visiting her family in the Cleveland area for about six weeks.  One of her cousins knew I did some astronomy and wanted to have some time under the stars, so when we drove here I brought my usual outreach setup for live video.  Then several other family members chimed in, so now I'm set up for two events in Northern Ohio, and one in Columbus.

NIGHT ONE:
Two nights of cloudy sky broke, so I thought I would do a practice run at this new northern urban location.  Daylight Savings Time is a real curse!  Sunset wasn't until 9 PM, and astronomical twilight didn't set in until almost 10 PM.  Mighty late!  I set up in the back yard of Susan's mother's house, which we keep available even though her mother is in a senior apartment complex.  Better than a motel.

I had a view of Polaris so I set up and waited for dark.  I commanded a GOTO over to the first quarter moon just to check alignment, and found my first mistake.  Being accustomed to Arizona and no Daylight Savings Time, I had set up the mount with the local clock difference from UTC but set DST to Yes.  So, I was an hour off in the sky.  When I set the actual offset to UTC, Local Time, and DST = Yes,  a new GOTO missed by only half a degree.  I played with the moon for a while, all the electronics worked perfectly, but as the sky was darkening I went indoors to avoid a whole attack squadron of mosquitoes with no chemical defense and shorts and sandals.  It was a tasty night for the buggers.

As I was watching the Moon, I heard my wife get a call from her brother near by who wanted to know if we had the scope set up.  Oh Boy, a Star Party!  My brother-in-law Bill, his wife Ola and her daughter Icey (they are originally from Thailand), and Bill’s friend Chuck and Chuck’s wife and daughter came over just as it was dark enough to do things.  I was looking at the Eastern sky, and the screen display on the fireworks from the local minor league baseball stadium was quite psychedelic.  Then, at the end of the game, the home team won so there was about ten minutes of pyrotechnics.  I went to the Moon first, and pointed out the Lunar Poodle (Seas of Serenity, Tranquility, fecundity, and Crises with the Apollo 11 landing site in Tranquility).  The Summer Triangle was nice and high, so I did a one-star alignment on Vega and showed off M57, the Ring Nebula and did the whole stellar evolution story.  All night I did the show as though it was a high school outreach.  Showing items, and throwing in cultural education.  The Ring was spectacular at about 4 seconds of integration, and we stayed on it for a while.  Then I went over to The Dumbbell, and had to increase the integration time.  But anything over about 8 seconds was giving a white-out screen due to the light pollution and residual moisture.  I stopped and added an Astronomik UHC filter, and the view turned black except for the gorgeous nebula about 1/3 of the screen, and awesome Milky Way stars.  That one we kept for quite a while.  The only glob really visible with the southern/western sky blocked by houses, trees, and street lights was M13, but the city lights, Moon, and high humidity killed any chance to find it.  I went over to Albireo, and it put on quite a show.  With zero integration time, all that was visible was the yellow and blue pair.  Then I started to increase the integration time, and more and more of the Milky Way started jumping out.  I ended up unfiltered and about 0.79 seconds integration time, and the color of the double star maintained itself but the yellow star grew huge, the blue one half the size, with the Milky Way star field in the background.  More teaching.

Last stop was to align on Alkaid and try for M51m The Whirlpool galaxy.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my Deep Sky filter at the scope, and any attempt to up the integration time to a suitable level left a whitish cover over the view, although we could see the structure of the galaxies at 12 seconds integration.  Usually I’d be up in the high 20s, but the humidity and light pollution made that impossible.

By now, it was after 11:30 PM, time to shut down.  It ended up as a pretty good night considering a small back yard, fireworks, humidity, and urban lighting.  I was able to get in a bit of Greek and Native American culture as well as the night sky.

NIGHT 2
Weather reports kept saying this would be a clear night.  Bad joke.  But we had scheduled this to take place about 30 miles to the southeast, and Susan’s cousin had found an unlighted neighborhood association park with the usual 60 foot trees not in the way, so although the sky was high stratus all day, we crossed our fingers and went over.

This time, the audience was one of Susan’s 59 cousins, her 7 sons, and various spouses and children.  Probably close to 15, maybe more.  Set up went perfectly, virtually everyone was in place before the end of astronomical twilight, so I went over to the Moon again and did the Lunar Poodle.  I also did a Yaqui Indian legend about the Sun wanting the Moon for a girlfriend, but he never satisfies the Moon’s simple request.  There were probably a half dozen elementary school aged children in the group, and after seeing the poodle on the monitor, they could pick it up naked eye.  We also talked about the Navajo legend of the creation of the Sun and Moon.  Then I went over to Saturn, which was quite beautiful and we stayed there a bit.  Just as yesterday, I aligned on Vega and showed off the Ring and the Dumbbell, this time starting with the UHC filter installed.  After getting the focus corrected, it was again a beautiful tale of stellar evolution.  I tried going to other objects, but the overcast was really rolling in and even Albireo and M82, alternatively called Bode’s Galaxy or The Cigar, were not even visible in the monitor, even with a Lumicon Deep Sky filter.

We also talked some cultural lore, like Mizar/Alcor being vision tests, or Plains Indian cues for hunting buffalo when Alcor, the rider appears to ride Mizar the horse.

On neither night was any hint of the Milky Way visible to the naked eye.  Even Cassiopeia was wiped out.  Arcturus and Spica were up, but no constellations detectable. 

Quite a change from Arizona!  But the local population was happy to hear the cultural stories and see what the sky has available.  Rain tonight, but Monday night should be clear, so I might be out in the back yard avoiding fireworks.

Jim O'Connor

South Rim Coordinator

Grand Canyon Star Party

gcsp@tucsonastronomy.org

[laudropb]

Thanks for the very nice report. It is always enjoyable to talk stars with the public. Keep up the good work. Thanks for posting.

[Skylook123]

Thanks Much...In all the years I've been doing outreach, the cultural myths, lore, and legend seems to make the sky more personal to the visitors.

[Piero]

Really nice reading. It must have been a lovely experience. I was in Santa Fe, in New Mexico last year and the whole area gave me a rich emotion about ancient myths, legends and history. Being out there, away from the city together with Earth and Sky must be something amazing.

Thanks very much for sharing your report. 

Piero

[Skylook123]

Thank You Piero.  It was a great pair of outings.  Humanity is called to the sky for many reasons, and even hints of the wonders was exciting to the observers, and the stories made it personal.  Sometimes we who've observed for some time take our capabilities a bit for granted, but we all have something to share with others, opening minds to the universe. 

Some people use the phrase "Looking up to the sky."  The late John Dobson preferred "Looking down into the sky."  Personally, I use "Looking out to our Universe", which seems to be what we are doing - looking out to a universe of which we are a small part.