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2017 Grand Canyon Star Party South Rim - Day 2


Skylook123

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DAY TWO - Getting Closer, But Heat Has Become Oppressive

A second year of temperatures well above normal.  It makes any daytime activity really uncomfortable for we geezers.  Those who know about my cardiac emergency last year, rest assured I'm doing great but I need to be tremendously observant on hydration.

Today was our club thank you to the volunteers by throwing an early afternoon pizza party.  Three hours outside, even in the gorgeous pine forest, was highly debilitating.  Felt like I'd run a marathon!  But blood pressure, pulse, and diabetic glucose numbers are darn near perfect.  Now if only I could get the scope to behave.

Grandson Stephen and I showed up at the site a bit early, braving the heat to try to deal with last night's misbehaviors.  I took down the mount to the tripod and found the polar alignment initial setup was about 30 degrees off and the level suffered from one leg having slipped.  Corrected that and set up again.  To remove any lingering defects from yesterday I reset the controller to factory values.  More troubleshooting would wait for dark.

I was the speaker tonight, giving a broad overview of the types of object that would be in view so that the terminology would be familiar.  We again raffled off a First Scope donated by Celestron through the help of Kevin Legore and his Focus Astronomy outreach foundation.  After the raffle, I got some interesting questions from a public point of view, not many astronomer's usual cosmological thinking.  First, the existence of multiple universes.  And then the question of alien life form existence and visits.  I try to treat all questions with respect and provide the cogent arguments that might be made, and people are usually OK with the answers because I kind of switch the tables on them by raising the thought elements that go along with the questions.  And one 5 year old budding astrophysicist wanted to talk about the Orion Nebula!  She was very shy, but lit up when we talked about the Trapezium at her level of understanding, and what was causing that glow, anyway?  I'd almost prefer to have her potential future than my actual past!

Then back to the scope field.  I had been asked to do the 9:30 constellation tour, so the time window was pinched.  The tour went very well; almost 60 people, so I tried to push the basics of the ecliptic vs. the zodiac, all of the visible zodiacal constellations and their stories in both the Greek and multi-cultural points of view, and it was appreciated when I went into some particularly life affirming Native American ways of approaching the night sky.  A half dozen folks stayed afterwards and it is surprising to me at times how interested many are in the Pleiades, which are not available.  At least we could get a touch of Gemini available, as well as the rest of the zodiac above the horizon except for Cancer, covered in thin cloud.  It was a very uplifting experience to get the reaction to positive, and alternative, ways of looking at their home universe.

Back at the scope, we refined the balance and tried many forms of the available alignments but none really worked.  After the tour, we continued trying to make it work but the pointing accuracy was still pretty grim.  After a Two-Star alignment and adding two calibration stars, I was finally able to stumble onto M13 where I discovered the transparency limitations.  Polar was still pretty off with the drift, and after we decided to shut down, I found the DEC balance was way nose heavy so at this weight, 34 pounds on the 30 pound rated mount. that sure couldn't help.  I'll have more tomorrow about a noon trip I made for more checkout.  Still a puzzle.

Doing the night talk, and the walk around the sky with the constellation tour, was a real relief from the scope issues.  Never take a mount you've never seen and integrate a scope the mount's never had on it, for the first time in front of 1400 people!

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