2016 Grand Canyon Star Party - Day 8 - Heavy Clouds Early, Clear, Cold, And Windy Late

[Skylook123]

2016 26th Annual Grand Canyon Star Party In Memory Of Joe Orr

DAY EIGHT - Heavy Clouds At Sunset That Gradually Cleared Late

Location: Grand Canyon Visitor Center, South Rim of Grand Canyon, AZ, about 340 miles north of home in Tucson, about 7000 ft. elevation

Weather: Chilly and windy, with another huge weather front moving in. Predictions said early clearing, but that did not happen until nearly 10 PM.

Seeing and Transparency: Non-existent until after about 9 when some holes opened, then spread out clear. Thunderstorms forecast for early morning did not happen, but some raindrops were fealt around 9 PM but the sky cleared later.

Equipment (did not set up tonight):

10" Meade SCT on Atlas EQ-G mount, operating all night at f/5

Mallincam Xterminator video system on the 10", 19" QFX LCD monitor.

Today was the final day pot luck, this time in the campground. It was a nice final gathering, but we could see the clouds forming during the early afternoon. Still, it's always nice to see the faces behind the voices we hear around us at night.

The weather from yesterday left, only to be replaced by more thick and threatening skies. I had packed up the night before, and wasn't feeling terribly well I didn't bother setting up at all. The group tried, though, with about thirty telescopes in position. Not even the Moon nor Jupiter were burning through as the sun went down and we went in to start the night talk.

Dennis Young, from the Sirius Lookers in Sedona, was our presenter at the sunset talk, showing off a set of phenomenally beautiful combinations of scenic geological views with astronomical themes, comets passing by some of the spectacular red rock formations in Sedona, and other unique geological locations in Arizona, demonstrating a variety of lighting tools to bring out the beauty of sky and land, water and rock, cactus and comets. He ended with a couple of short videos. The first was a well-produced message about the negative affects on human health and general environmental impacts. The second was a compilation of thousands of Cassini images of Saturn into a dynamic movie forming a spectacular full screen view of Cassini's path to, and past, Saturn and through the ring plane, including moons as the craft flew through.

After the indoor night talk and award of the final two Celestron First Scopes, I came out to find only Vega in the Eastern sky. Without a scope set up, I volunteered to do the 9 and 10 PM Constellation tours, with the main themes being the cultural use of the night sky throughout history.

Once again, I led the 9 PM Constellation tour, starting from the perspective of why cultures needed and used the night sky using examples of 100,000 and 26,000 year discoveries. I was somewhat surprised that over 30 visitors risked the night adventure to come out and join the tour. I again used the Moon and Jupiter, and later Mars and Saturn breaking through the thinning cloud cover, to discus the ecliptic and zodiac orientation. Some segments of the night sky were coming and going, so I was able to repeat last night's alternative cultural approaches to the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia, and was able to do a lot of exposition on Greek, Near East (Elephant of Creation), and Navajo cultural use of the asterism and constellations including Polaris between them, all with just the laser pointer. Parts of the Milky Way were appearing, and we used Greek, Seminole, and O'odham conceptual use of the the arms of the Milky Way. Scorpius was now uncovered, allowing the comparative cultural uses of Scorpius and Orion by the Greek legends and Zeus separating them as an example to separate our conflicts, and the Navajo seeing the scorpion as a wise elder with a back bent from age, with the tail being unrelated rabbit tracks, and Orion being the warrior symbol as an example for preparedness. But for the Navajo, the First Great One and the First Thin One are also called the Mother-In-Law and the Son-In-Law. The are separated in the lore and in real life, as it is traditional that when a Navajo girl gets married, her husband and mother are not allowed to see or speak to each other for the rest of their lives. With Mars and Antares now visible, I shifted to the Greek name for Mars, Ares, the god of war, and Antares, as the place where the spirits of the soldiers who had died in battle are now reposing. We did a few more examples from more well known asterisms in the sky, and how various cultures used them, so we had a great 35 minute sky tour!

By the time of the 10 PM tour, the sky had virtually cleared, so the tour had real life sky characteristics with which to repeat the topics of the earlier tour with more emphasis on the visible elements such as the Summer Triangle and the alternative to Cygnus being Niska the Goose for Manitoba First Nations cultures as it indicates the migratory flyways for the returning geese and the opportunity for a change in protein source. It is always encouraging to seen the enlightenment arise in the audiences as the usage of the artifacts of the night have a cultural use, adapted by cultures going back thousands of years. To teach behavior and self-discipline to children, the Elephant of Creation is watching so better behave. Alternatively, Milky Way forming a magical spider web that a child violating a tribal rule might get stuck to so the parents can retrieve the young one are teaching tools, as well as all of the other guidelines in the sky for life lessons, from how we should interract with each other, to planting and harvesting regimens. One hundred thousand years or more have shown various cultural uses of the night sky, and to learn one's own culture it is sometimes helpful to study others. At the end of the tour, the sky was cleared and visitors were still hanging around as well as some of the intrepid astronomers showing off the wonders of the night sky, some still going after midnight and with high winds and temperatures down in the mid-40s.

Thus ends another year of fostering environmental awareness, the special achievement of Provisional International Dark Sky Park status, awarding eight Celestron First Scopes, and some absolutely gorgeous views of the objects of the night skies, all elements of the viewers' home universe. It would not be at all possible without the outstanding efforts by our A-Team of outreach specialists donating their time and equipment to this adventure, as well as the support of the National Park Service Ranger staff.

The hard physical work for their setup begins several days in advance, and now, on Sunday night after a long day of de-configuring all of the traffic controls and signage, there still is more effort to finish the clean up. It is very inspirational to watch this incredible staff work with the public. They have an internal mantra that I wish I could fully adapt in my own life...whatever the circumstances, Ranger On.

We stayed the extra day for R&R, fix some of the Park's spotter scope solar filters, and perform some other administrative functions before the trip home. Now the truck is all packed, we're looking forward to a full night's sleep, and an early trip home.

[happy-kat]

Great read again, thank you for sharing.

[Adrian Condon]

Hi Jim,

Glad that you had clear skies.

I have been to the Grand Canyon..... it's a wonderful place. I stayed in a hotel nearby and got up one morning at 04:30am and went up to the Canyon. 

I photographed the rising Sun and the way the canyon changes shape was fascinating. The purple light first thing was interesting and unexpected.

I would love to attend a star party there, as the night sky was dark.

I spoke to some of the canyon rangers who could not have been more helpful in answering loads of questions.

Trust you will be attending again....

Cheers

Adrian

[Skylook123]

On ‎6‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 12:05, happy-kat said:

Great read again, thank you for sharing.

Thanks!  I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[Skylook123]

On ‎6‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 12:55, Adrian Condon said:

Hi Jim,

Glad that you had clear skies.

I have been to the Grand Canyon..... it's a wonderful place. I stayed in a hotel nearby and got up one morning at 04:30am and went up to the Canyon. 

I photographed the rising Sun and the way the canyon changes shape was fascinating. The purple light first thing was interesting and unexpected.

I would love to attend a star party there, as the night sky was dark.

I spoke to some of the canyon rangers who could not have been more helpful in answering loads of questions.

Trust you will be attending again....

Cheers

Adrian

The rising and setting sun changes every day, and every minute as the angles and refraction are altered.  And the effect is different from Hopi Point to Mather Point to Yavapai Point to Desert View, every day a different color palette in play.   And the moonset from around Day 4 of the lunation through to  about Day 10 is also very striking from the Canyon edge.  I hope some day you can revisit for enough days to see how gorgeous the scene is as it goes through its changes.  And perhaps set up with us if you attend the Grand Canyon Star Party.  We had Robert Vine with us from the north part of England this year.  We need all the alternative points of view we can arrange for the visitors.

[alan potts]

Hello Jim,

A wonderful set of reports of your nights in what must be an ideal location, if the weather is playing ball. I imagine that you get very good dark skies that far out though I have not been there myself despite many trips to the United States. I guess that being more to the south it is also somewhat less affected at this time of year by it not getting dark until very late on, parts of the UK are still light at 11 o'clock at night, even where I am I have to wait until about 9.30 at the moment, that is if the sky was clear.

Thanks for taking the time to report.

Alan.

[Size9Hex]

That's a great series of reports. Thanks for taking the time to post them all. Really enjoyed reading through. Midsummer here in the UK is never truly dark and the image of the dark desert skies is fantastic even if the weather was hit and miss.

[Skylook123]

Thank you Paul, and the rest of the kind readers who have replied. 

I should clarify a bit about the 2016 event.  It turns out, I was attending under shaky circumstances.  When my primary care doc retired in late December, a pair of nurse practitioners bought the practice and began to scrub the records of existing patients.  They got to mine, and had a real couple of shocks to deal with.  First, going back about three years, my thyroid had started to fail.  Second, there was a record of a cardiac work-up because of some memory and balance problems I was having.  It said I had some possible blockages.  I was never told either piece of information.  For a few months I'd been feeling more and more run-down.   We started the cardiac checks in April, and got conflicting test results, Some said things were OK, some not.  So we decided on a full cardiac catheterization, and maybe need one stent put in, and do it after GCSP.  As a safety valve, since one club member was going to stay all week and was getting in Friday night, he'd stay in the shadows in case something unexpected happened.  I went through the week, but took Tuesday off and packed up the scope on Friday and Saturday because the weather was shaky and just did the 9 and 10 o'clock tours.  Really feeling run down, we stayed Sunday as planned at the Canyon.  Got home Monday last week, went in on Thursday for a 35 minute catheterization, and got a big surprise.  Needed five emergency bypasses, just got back home last night.  Good thing I do lots of walking and Health Rider work, so no sign of any heart damage but the arteries were a mess.  Now two months of recovery after being cracked open like a lobster, and my legs are a mess where they took the pieces for the bypasses.  

Great surgical team, and post-op care was awesome.  Six hours of surgery, five hours of recovery due to some sinus drainage that wouldn't quit, but the rest of the recovery is on a good track and I got to come home two days early.  Rehab is going to be a pain, literally and figuratively, but this explains a lot of things that have gotten strange over the last few years.  Bottom line, walked a tightrope!

[happy-kat]

Hope to read many more star party events from you, wishing you a good strong recovery. 

[Skylook123]

6 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Hope to read many more star party events from you, wishing you a good strong recovery. 

Thank you!  I hope to provide them for a long, long time.