Obs. Rpt., Catalina State Park, Catalina AZ, Jan. 30, 2016

[Skylook123]

Date: Saturday, January 30, 2016

I’m 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 Association’s 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 Messier’s 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 cultures’ 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 ¼” 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.  We’ll be back again next quarter!