Grand Canyon 2019!

Last week was the 29th Grand Canyon Star Party! Next May 6 will be the 30th anniversary of Vicki and me getting married in Vegas, and honeymooning at the Canyon for a couple days. We discovered that most any optics set up at the rim would attract a crowd, so we started inviting friends to join us in setting up scopes for a week-long public star party. About the first thing we did was to move it to June when it was a little warmer, but has only grown in popularity. They now attract upwards of 2,000 people a night to more than 60 telescopes. I now know what it is like to see your children grow up to do great things, as I feel this event is my offspring! I'm still the only one that has been to all of them (including the zeroth one!) and I hope to continue the streak!


I took lots of photos (nearly 1200), mostly destined for some time-lapse clips.  The weather was uniformly very good - perfectly clear for 3 nights of the 4 that I was able to attend. Sunday night we had memorably good seeing, permitting to see amazing details on Jupiter and Saturn, stars of the show in my eyes! Seems I spend most of the 3-hour window of observing on one of those two objects. In the 3 nights of observing, over 720 people looked through my telescope - numbers that were a little down from previous years, but with more telescopes, the number/scope would naturally drop a little.  That is me at right with my Celestron 14, with a 500mm telephoto mounted atop it for some astro-photos later when the crowds died down...


One of the coolest events that happened during the week (2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Grand Canyon as a national park) was the bestowing of "Dark Sky Park" status to the Grand Canyon by the International Dark-sky Association (IDA). Over the last few years, the Grand Canyon Conservancy has done a full census of lighting in the park and retrofitted over 5,000 lights to "dark-sky friendly". The photo at left shows the ceremony held the first day of the star party at Mather Amphitheater for speeches and the award (as well as some killer cookies!). Again, I'm thinking that our little event helped motivate the National Park Service into recognizing that dark skies are a resource and worthy of protecting!


It takes a special kind of amateur astronomer to use their valuable vacation time to migrate to Arizona every year to show the sky to the public! We've had a great set of regulars who have attended nearly from the beginning. It is always fun to catch up with people we only see at this event and find out what is going on in their lives. This year we had a new addition - Chris Fuld showed up from Seattle with his 40" telescope - the largest we've enjoyed for a couple decades! All the astronomers are busy during prime observing, but I heard he enjoyed an hour-long line to look through his behemoth. I got a glimpse through it late one night after closing down when I was only second in line. I saw the "Needle Galaxy" NGC 4565 spread out across the field of view with a dust lane through the center.



I did take a few celestial sorts of photographs. The photo of me by the scope shows the 500mm telephoto mounted up, and I did take a few shots with it. Unfortunately, about the time the crowds thinned and allowed taking photos, the astronomers also started driving up to load up their scopes for the night! So many were affected even by the parking lights as they approached. Shown here is a frame with the 200mm lens showing Jupiter among the dark nebulae of the Summer Milky Way. For those familiar with the dark clouds of the Milky Way, just to the left of Jupiter is the crooked knee of the "Prancing Horse" nebula. Also, the dark Snake Nebula (B72) can be seen at lower left. Once this photo was taken, I took a pair of others to bridge the distance to nearby Antares with the 200.  Shown at right is the assemblage of frames. There are likely some gradients in the photo from both parking lights and improper vignetting correction. Each frame is only a stack of about 5 frames of a minute exposure each, so great things should not be expected, only something to return to and do better next time!


Our observing spot is about a quarter mile from the rim of the Canyon, and rimside is a popular place come sunset time... But the period around sunset is pretty busy for the astronomers setting up their gear and arranging last-minute details. I only witnessed one sunset, and that was the night before the star party (went up a day early). We thought we were going to miss it as the sun disappeared behind a cloud bank, but at the last minute it popped out just before setting behind a distant canyon wall. This is an "HDR" shot, combining 5 exposures of different lengths to try to capture all details that can be seen...


On a couple afternoons I set up my camera to take some time-lapse sequences that may or may not ever make it to these pages. One of them was at a popular overlook - Mather Point, where there is a rock that people from around the world stand in line to get photographed atop with Canyon in background.  These two are my favorites - one looking like a pair from a cheer squad, and another striking a yoga pose. Fun stuff!


Well, that is it for another year. Always fun to get people excited about what they can see through a telescope. Next year's evens will be held 13-20 June, so mark your calendars now and I'll see you there! You can't say I didn't give you enough warning to make plans!