2017 Grand Canyon Star Party South Rim - Day 1

[Skylook123]

DAY ONE - Some Good, Some Not

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

Weather: 91F mid-day, 88F at sunset, 75F when we quit near 00:30. Some cloud layers around the horizons early, most clearing. 

Seeing and Transparency: I never got a chance to really evaluate conditions due to mount issues.

Equipment:
10" Meade SCT on Celestron AVX mount
Mallincam Xterminator video system on the 10", 19" QFX LCD monitor.

Just as last year, we are being baked alive.  For the rest of the star party, predictions are a minimum of mid 90s, with some show two days at over 100F.  YIKES.  And Partly Cloudy is also in the daily forecasts.

I had a total failure of the power controller card in the usual Orion mount four days before leaving, so I picked up a Celestron AVX.  It has and advertised payload limit of 30 pounds, and my setup is 29.2, so I thought it would do the job.  We tried a quick solar system alignment at home with a 90mm refractor, at it put Jupiter dead center.  I thought we would be good to go. Meanwhile, Orion Tech Support moved a mountain and got me a new power card for the EQ-G, but the DB9 output port was dead so no luck; SVX would have to do.

First night, it didn't.  Alignments impossible to apply, even with multiple calibration stars.  And balance never seemed consistent, along with several other issues.  Might try the 90mm tomorrow, we might have a level problem, and certainly have a polar alignment problem so we'll try again tomorrow night and redo the entire setup.

Jack Huerkamp and Jim Meadows were there and set up, having a great outreach experience with Mallincam equipment.  My grandsons and I helped rangers on occasion, but our experience was a 3.5 hour bust.

We started off the evening with recognition of our departing former National Park Service GCSP Coordinator, Marker Marshall, who has already left for Joshua Tree National park but retuned to aid her follow-on coordinator, Ranger Rader Lane.  The Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, who coordinates the astronomer participation in this event presented Marker a Special Service Award certificate and plaque acknowledging her 11 years of guidance for GCSP.  It's very sad to see her go, but Rader is quite a replacement with an academic astronomy background as well as his naturalist training.

Tonight's talk was a reprise of Chap Percival's eclipse presentation from last year. One of our astronomer volunteers, based in Sarasota, Florida, Chap is somewhat of an eclipse chaser and aficionado who has written a book, Go See The Eclipse - And Take A Kid With You.  The main focus was on the Great American Eclipse on August 21, 2017, where the United States will be the only land mass to experience the event.  He presented the meaning of an eclipse, and how the alignment of the Earth, Sun, and Moon generate eclipse opportunities.  He discussed the relative scales of the objects, and their distances, using a tennis ball as the moon, a basketball as the Earth at a distance across the auditorium, and a slide on the theater screen of EPCOT as the Sun at a distance of 12,000 feet from our theater stage.  After the relative size discussion, he covered the eclipse path next year, and local factors along the way.  At the end, we again raffled off a Celestron First Scope thanks to Kevin LeGore and his Focus Astronomy Foundation along with Celestron's donation of eight First Scopes for our week.

Theater went well, the night sky audience was enthusiastic, but our night was a big disappointment.  With a temperature predicted today for 96F, I don't relish a complete teardown and reset this afternoon but today is our regular than-the-astronomers pizza party, and have to be there.  We couldn't do this spectacular event without the awesome performance of 120+ volunteers who pay their own way, pay for their lodging (mostly), and put so much of themselves into being the A-Team of public outreach.

Being able to honor and show our appreciation to Ranger Marker Marshall with the TAAA Special Service Award made it a great night.  Better luck tonight??