2018 Canyon Wrapup

Again, better late than never, here are a few photos and stories from this year's Grand Canyon Star Party! It ended a week yesterday, but as normal lately, the photos have to settle into my brain before figuring what I'll do with them - text normally follows the photos I've selected! With a recently-obtained fisheye (Sigma 15mm F/2.8), I think these are the most striking photos! Particularly the one at left that shows the Milky Way rising over the crowd of star party telescopes and observers...

The shot at right is a bit more personal as I'm shown sitting beside my Celestron 14".  The string of red lights is one of the park rangers stopping by to say hi, and there is also someone looking thru the telescope. The bright "star" at upper right is planet Jupiter, and Saturn, a little fainter, has just risen above the trees, just to the right of the observer's head... The same part of the Milky Way - the brightest part near the Sagittarius/Scorpio border, is always spectacular as a backdrop. These are both 30 second exposures, wide open and an ISO of 4,000.


In the right shot above of my C-14, you can see above the observer's head my 500mm lens mounted there for some snapshots taken after the crowd thins out... I did this last year and was a lot of fun, so decided to do it again! With the C-14 properly polar aligned, it should easily track for a couple minute sub-exposure, so took a few frames to stack to decrease noise and increase signal and color saturation. At left is an eternal favorite this time of year - Messier 20 above (the Triffid Nebula), and Messier 8 below (the Lagoon Nebula). On more than a few occasions, I pulled up a frame of this image and used the colors to explain the physics that caused them. Of course visually no colors are visible - just shades of grey. It was a powerful demonstration - people could see the blue (reflection from a nearby blue star) and red (hydrogen fluorescing from UV light from nearby hot stars) nebulae, but no color. It demonstrated how our eye has evolved so that our B&W sensors (rods) allow us to see in dim conditions, but the color sensor (rods) only work during daylight brightness levels.

Also visible nearby in Sagittarius was the comet 2016 M1 PanSTARRS. I knew approximately where it was and in my 3rd shot there it was! Comets are easy to spot when near the sun - they show up green from the dissociation of carbon molecules by sunlight. On this night (11 June), it was 120 million miles from us on the Earth, and 214 Million miles from the Sun! While it gets a little closer to the sun at perihelion in October, it will not be visible from the northern hemisphere... This is a stack of 4 exposures of 60 seconds each. Oh - that fuzzy star at upper right? That is Messier 70 - a globular cluster about 29,000 light years towards the center of our galaxy...


Anyone who knows me also knows I'm a fan of dark nebulae! How do you see a black cloud, I hear you ask? Well, you see it in silhouette against clouds of stars, so looks like dark clouds against the Milky Way, as in the fisheye shots above. A spot in southern Ophiuchus is rich in dark clouds. Shown here at left thru the 500mm is part of what is called the "pipe" nebula because of its resemblance to a smoking pipe with more dark nebulae curling upwards...


And at right is a little dark cloud visible at the top in the link's wide field - the Snake Nebula, or B72... The "S" shape of the snake is strikingly apparent in photographs, but try as I might, have never seen it visually!


There IS one dark nebula you can see - Barnard 86, the Inkspot Nebula! It is shown at left in the full frame of the 500mm. Seen against one of the brighter clouds of the Milky Way center, the small dark cloud is easy to see in silhouette between a small star cluster and bright-ish star... Several friends and I show the dark cloud at the Canyon for something "totally different"!

Also for something different, Omega Centauri is a spectacular globular cluster that just clears the southern horizon.  Not many people have it on their observing list at the Grand Canyon, but I happened to notice that it was hanging just over the visitor center from my telescopes location on the field. I happened to have my 200mm mounted on the scope that day so took a 30 second snapshot of it - shown at right. It is a HUGE cluster, upwards of 4 million stars about 16,000 light years away.  But it is usually a dim glow seen so lowly in the sky. A photograph can make it look more apparent - here over the VC roof!


We had a great 6 nights of the star party, but some clouds and sprinkles (!) at the end. There were spectacular crowds at night, good crowds of astronomers too - likely about our best year given the weather at the end. We had elk too! Remember I've been going to these things for 28 years, and in the beginning saw absolutely NO elk. Now they are hardly getting excited about. They are evidently smart enough they know how to turn on the water fountains to get a drink - the photo at left taken near the bathroom at our old site at Yavapai Point... And as the star party wound down, a young female stops by the telescope field to say hello to Erich Karkoschka! We are supposed to stay over 100 feet from them, but we're not sure the protocol when they walk up to YOU!



Finally the last Sunday dawned clear - very clear, and after a few days of clouds, a trip was needed to go see the Canyon. We all took many photos of the Canyon, but one of the most striking of mine was from Mojave Point where an agave flower in its brilliant yellows was seen against the reds and browns of the Canyon. At left is an HDR shot of the plant mostly in deep shade, and at right is a close-up of the flower with what I think is a female black carpenter bee pollinating the beautiful flowers...

Next year's star party, the 29th, faces some uncertainty as the current organizer Jim O'Connor has broadcast his intentions to retire from those efforts. But the event is so successful that I think it would continue regardless. The astronomers love it, the public and park loves it, so I'm sure it will continue far into the future in something like the present form...

The Weekend of Randomness!

Note piggy-back 500mm lens!

Newlyweds Michael and Casey!

A few weeks ago was the 2017 edition of the Grand Canyon Star Party. I attended the first few days - I feel responsible since I'd started the thing way back in 1991, so had to keep an eye on "my baby"! I was in a nostalgic mood with this being the first one held after Melinda's death last Fall, and it seemed more than ever were asking me about the origins of the event - started at the honeymoon w/my first wife Vicki at the rim. So I was enveloped in a melancholy mood as the event started...

But the crowd wore on me - the tourists that stop and look thru our telescopes are always so enthusiastic that sadness was not long accepted. On the second night I had mounted my camera piggy-back on the scope so I could take and show a photo of what folks were looking at. Early in the evening I met Casey and Michael - they had just been married canyon-side the day before and were now honeymooning here! Someone down the line of telescopes had told them to come look me up and say hi. Well their story similar to mine certainly cheered me up and I asked them to come back when I didn't have 30 people in line looking at Jupiter, which they said they would.

Grand Canyon view of C/2015 V2 Johnson

Casey and Michael Johnson wedding photo!

My crowds eventually thinned and I'd all-but forgotten them. Left alone, it took me a while to find the "bright" comet Johnson in the evening sky. While bright enough to barely be seen in binoculars, it took a while to get it into the telescope, but the camera quickly confirmed its green coma and short tail that it was indeed Comet Johnson C/2015 V2. I've already told the story of how it was discovered as part of the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson by Jess Johnson in 2015, thus the name after the discoverer. About this time Casey and Michael appeared and they got to see the comet thru the eyepiece and in the back of the camera. I then offered to take them a few stacked exposures of the Triffid and Lagoon Nebulae as a wedding present, and showed them the pretty blue and red nebula in a short exposure. As the camera recorded the half dozen frames, I took their email contact from them. I was amazed that Casey and Michael's married name is Johnson - so had to go back and tell them the story of the Comet Johnson that they had just seen! And strangely enough too, many of you may know that Melinda's maiden name was Johnson! It was a set of circumstances way to weird to be random, and quickly had me tearing up...

Another of Casey and Michael's wedding shots!

My little wedding offering to them...

The other big event this summer is the solar eclipse coming up in August. I'm always loathe to make plans days or weeks in advance, let alone years or months. But in my talking to the folks in line looking through the Celestron at the Canyon, I met a family from Wyoming. When asked where they would be on the 21st of August, w/out hesitation they said "Watching the eclipse from our yard!" Of course, my immediate response was if they would mind if I brought up a dozen people to camp in their yard, with access to a shower and bathroom? They said yes! So now I have a destination for my group of Russian amateur astronomers and the group of friends that want to follow along. Our new friends in small-town Wyoming have even offered to cook for us, so it sounds like an adventure that will soon-enough appear here.

So randomness and circumstance are still at work in the universe! It has been said (perhaps by me!?) that if you sit along the rim of the Grand Canyon long enough, you will meet everyone in the world! It certainly worked wonders for me, raising me out of my funky mood, and also finding a home for the 21st of August! May the universe continue to be surprising!

The June Tradition!

For over a quarter century now I've followed a tradition. Back in 1990, my first wife Vicki and I ran off to Vegas to get married. Pausing at the Canyon for a brief honeymoon before a road trip to the Midwest to meet my family, we noticed that a telescope set up at the rim to look within immediately gathered a crowd. We decided then that we'd invite a few friends to join us on our anniversary and have a star party. Thus was started the Grand Canyon Star Party, our anniversary in May of 1991 (4 telescopes over the week!) was butt-freezingly cold, so have held it dark-of-the-moon in June since the second interation in '92.

The early years the rangers seemed to tolerate us, and it took a decade to grow into the full partnership it is now between park and astronomer. I've managed to be the only attendee that has attended at least a night at every year's event, sometimes over the objections of my boss or my responsibilities of a care-giving spouse.

Today is the last day of this year's version, and I was able to attend the first 3 nights last weekend. It was a great time, and an affirmation of what I found the very first event in 1991 - the joy and appreciation in feedback from the tourists that may be seeing a dark sky for the first time is the highest payback that us as astronomers can receive in sharing the views through our telescopes! I ran the event for a generation (about 18 years), and it is nice to see it thriving under Jim O'Connor's and the Park Service's attentions. At left is a selfie I took in our parking lot at sunset with the venerable Celestron 14" - here with a piggy-backed 500mm lens for some late-night imaging...

This year's trip up was uneventful. An early-morning start of 6am got us through Phoenix before reaching the 115F+ temperatures that were expected. The road typically taken between Flagstaff and Canyon was closed because of a fire, so went west to Williams before north to the Canyon. Interestingly, the fire could be seen at one of the many cinder cones connected to the volcanic field with the San Francisco Mountains. The smoke from the fire made it look as though the ancient cinder cone was active again!

A quick stop at the telescope field, a run to the campground to set up the tent, a bite of dinner and then back to set up the telescope for the night. It wasn't until about sunset that I had a chance to roam and meet up with friends from over the years. At right, Bernie Sanden at left had a trick played on him - Dennis Young at right had hidden Bernie's expensive Tele-Vue eyepiece and replaced it with a cheap substitute. Before too much anguish, Dennis 'fessed up, and Bernie managed a smile at being "scammed". That is Joe Bergeron, long time artwork contributor for our t-shirt designs in blue at left...

The first night was fantastic! I had an immediate crush of public as soon as we were able to get Jupiter in the eyepiece. I had 30 people in line at my scope most of the night, so was difficult to change objects without upsetting folks in line for a while. Managed some great views of Jupiter, Saturn and Messier 13 in Hercules. The seeing was near-perfect, and, of course, as soon as the crowd departed after about 10:30, I fine-tuned the collimation of the C-14 and was able to run the power on Saturn well in excess of 300X without any breakdown!

After a reasonable night's sleep in the cool temps, I made it to the rim after nearly 24 hours there! It looked about the same as last year! Looking for a nice shot of it, over near Yavapai Point (where the star party was held for decades!), took some shots from one of my special viewpoints from where I used to set up my binoculars for hours and days to attract people's attention to the star party. Here I took a pair of HDR (High Dynamic Range) images with both the standard camera (Canon 6D) and an IR-modified camera (an old converted 20D). While the color image looks nice, I always like the alien view of an IR image, whose longer wavelengths cut haze, darkens a clear sky and turns vegetation white. The HDR image uses 3 different exposures at differing exposures to compress the shadows and highlights to see all details in the single frames...

When I had arrived at Yavapai, I noticed a little something out-of-the-ordinary. As I left my parked van, I spotted an elk as it walked past me towards the rim with single-minded-purpose! With a quick pace, looking neither left nor right, it seemed to be late for a meeting... After my own stop at the bathroom and collecting camera gear, I headed rimside too. As I approached, I found the reason for his being there! Right at the rim was a water bottle filling station and there was the elk... He had managed to open the valve and there he was slurping water from the valve!

Now realize these are NOT pets, nor raised in captivity. They are wild creatures capable of dangerous behavior if started or if fawns were around. Yet there was a crowd of people gathered around, most turning their back to it to take a selfie. The three girls at right asked me to take their photo, but I declined saying I wanted to document their selfie because they looked so stupid! There has been a huge uptick in elk over the years and they were pretty much everywhere around the park, at all hours of the day and night, so whenever driving you had to keep an eye out!

On night 2 there was a little smoke coming up from the fire near Flagstaff, but it dissipated and cleared just after sunset, never really affecting the observing. Huge crowds again, and I met some amazing people, whose story I'll save for a subsequent post. The top photo shows the 500mm lens recently obtained mounted on the scope and I hoped when the crown thinned, to take some photos to better show people what we were looking at with a few seconds of exposure. About 10:30 again the crowds thinned and I went looking for Comet Johnson C/2015 V2. It was in a very sparse field and took me a while to locate it, but a brief exposure showed the characteristic green glow, caused mostly by the dissociation of carbon in the vacuum of space as it approaches the sun. The exposure at left is a stack of 6 exposures of 2 minutes each and show a short stumpy tail that we could only imagine visually in the 14" telescope...

Those who have seen my photos before know I'm a fan of dark nebulae - seen mostly by silhouette against more distant star clouds. For that reason I show the exposure of Saturn at right - extremely overexposed at center. It happens to be crossing the Summer Milky Way and a long-ish exposure shows many of these distant dust clouds in profile. For that reason alone this is a favorite exposure from the Canyon!

Similarly, not far away, I tried the same thing on one of the coolest sights in the sky, Messier 22. A globular cluster, it contains the mass of about 300,000 solar masses, and is quite spectacular with the rich star fields in the background. In the full field at left, you can see the thin wisps of dark clouds in projection against the star clouds near the galactic center. While the 500mm is nice for showing extended clouds like this, it isn't optimum for showing details of objects like this cluster. A full resolution crop is shown at right and starts to show some details of the star cluster. It also has a lil' buddy to the upper right - what looks like an extended bright star is actually another globular NGC 6642. This smaller cluster is also nearly 3 times farther away (26,000 light years, vs 10,000) than M22, making it look diminutive.

Also nearby is a pretty pair of objects if you do wide-field imaging like this with the 500mm. You might have spotted them here before because M20 and M8 (Triffid and Lagoon Nebulae) are a common target of mine. Both glow with the characteristic red tint of hydrogen emission, as these star-formation clouds are predominantly hydrogen. The Triffid Nebula at top is so-named because it is split into 3 pieces by narrow dark clouds. It also sports a striking blue shade on top - the result of the dust and gas reflecting light from a nearby blue star.


Finally as I was considering closing down for the night, I noticed that the Andromeds Galaxy was getting high in the northeast. The 500mm is a perfect lens for the object as it barely fits in oriented diagonally. Messier 32 is the nearest bright galaxy to the Milky Way at about 2.5 million light years. It is also the farthest you can see with the naked eye if you have a dark enough sky!

Tuesday brought something rare - clouds! There was even thunder and lightning scattered around the Canyon. I spent some time along the Canyon edge. Shown here is an interesting sight - a single condor attracting a LOT of attention, not unlike a Hollywood starlet and a gaggle of press corps!

I ended up heading home after dinner, avoiding the 120+ degree heat of Phoenix by traversing it at Midnight! So I got my dose of the star party - glad I made it, always wanting more, but sometimes life gets in the way!

Grand Canyon Stereo!

It was last year that I started taking some 3D shots of the Canyon in earnest. I had plans to do more this year, especially with the new 6D camera, but long hours and warm temps added to my overall lethargy... So I only got a few frame sets in, some similar in scope to last year's efforts. Note that ALL of these images need the red/blue anaglyph glasses to see the 3D effect.


The new 6D camera has a sensor twice as large and nearly twice as many pixels as my 8+ year old XSi Canon. It manifests itself is several ways, but shown here is one of them. At left is an anaglyph of Isis Temple with the 6D and 70-200 zoom set to 200mm. One has the choice of down-sampling to the 1600 pixel max limit of the blog, or cropping to full resolution for maximum scale, as shown at right. Both should show similar sharpness when the full-size images are loaded, even though they are taken from the same 2 images!

I was on a stroll between the major hotels of El Tovar and Bright Angel to take these. The baselines varied - Isis Temple was further away so needed at least 80 meters or more. Here at left is Maricopa Point on the West Rim Drive - also not very far away, so only used a 40 meter baseline - about the same for "the Battleship, shown at right just below the rim off the Lodges...

A careful observer might spot some differences from last year's anaglyphs... One of the decisions that have to be made in assembling these is the "zero point" crossing. It is the part of the picture where the two images are exactly aligned and will appear to hover at the same level as the text or the edge of the frame. In the earlier efforts, I chose the zero point pretty much randomly - as a result parts of the 3D image appeared to hover in front of the frame. After discussions with friends over the last year, I've been encouraged to place the zero point near the front of the image, so the entire 3D image will be below the page. While my eyes are still limber enough to converge upon most anything, my friends encouraged me to do it for eye comfort in merging the images...

Here is a wide shot combining the distant Isis Temple with the closer Battleship. Using a large baseline would introduce the afore-mentioned issues in merging the nearer part of the image. So I used a moderate baseline that provided good stereo effect on the Battleship. As a result, the 3D effect in the far distant canyons is reduced compared to the Isis anaglyph at the top of the post... The image at left was taken with the 6D, while the one at right was taken with my IR-modified camera. While the image appears mostly black and white (save the red/blue colors for the anaglyph 3D image), the IR wavelengths provide better haze penetration and darker sky. I'm thinking also that the 3D effect is stronger in the near B&W image, compared to color...


And just to prove that you don't need distant mesas and canyons for stereo effects, after the morning walk when all of these were taken we met some of the crew at the local pizza joint and I took a stereo pair of the "We Cook Special". Cool, eh? Ok, enough of the 3D stuff for now!

Grand Canyon Star Party, 2016!

This week was the 26th Grand Canyon Star Party... Tonight (Saturday, 11 June) is the last night, but with my schedule, I was only able to attend 3 nights through the middle of the event. Melinda needs to have someone around to assist her, and our friend Donna graciously offered to stay to allow me to keep my attendance streak alive. I'm the only observer to attend every year of the event, in fact, I've done 27 as I was there for the zeroth version, when my new bride, first wife Vicki and I first honeymooned there and decided to come back for our anniversary with some friends to hold a public star party at rim side. Other than pushing the date back to June (froze our butts off on the first one held on our actual anniversary in early May), the event continues today!

So Monday morning (6 June) found buddy Roger and me wheeling our way towards the Canyon. Now over the decades, things "happen". There was the rear wheel blowout a few years back, and in an early year I had radiator issues in my old-old van before getting "Old Blue" in '94. So breakdown issues are always on my mind. It wasn't really a surprise when we stopped in Phoenix for a quick bathroom break and the "new" van wouldn't start to continue the trip. The resultant clicking sound indicated an electrical issue, and sure enough, there was some battery corrosion, but my tool collection was little prepared for the weird battery terminals.n Fortunately, Roger is an AAA member, so help was on the way in minutes and in short order, "Kevin" had tested the system and recommended a battery replacement with 6 year guarantee, and we were on our way again. No other misadventures occurred, but we got in a little late to the campground and after plopping the tents down, headed to the observing site. It appeared there were plenty of scopes, so we didn't feel guilty not setting up the first night, but instead walked out to the rim to see our first view of the canyon at right, just a little before sunset. Roger hadn't been there in about a decade, so after a quick inspection, headed down to the observing field to rub elbows...

We immediately ran into lots of acquaintances as the astronomers tend to re-attend from one year to the next. While the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association sponsors the event, the astronomers that volunteer to set up their scopes for the public are from all over the country - perhaps 60% from Arizona, but many from California, Texas and elsewhere. The organizer Jim O'Connor clams we had astronomers from England and France too! There were some thin clouds hanging around after sunset, and we gathered to chat as they hung around. Shown at left is a group of us, starting from left Doug Taylor-Gebler, Joe Bergeron, Roger Ceragioli and Bernie Sanden, with George Barber at far right. While the clouds might normally have affected the observing, this year, with a trio of bright planets (Jupiter, Mars and Saturn) visible from sunset, as well as a waxing crescent Moon, these clouds affected observing little. Once the observing started in earnest, I captured the view at right in a 20 second exposure with the new 6D and Samyang 14mm lens. In it, Bernie's 12" is pointed at Saturn at center near the horizon, with other star party action in the background.



After a little more visiting with friends, Roger and I decided to retire a little early after our long day of travel, so headed "home" to camp. We tried to stop at Yavapai cafeteria, newly remodeled, but couldn't find the snacks we were looking for, found the general store closed, so headed to the tents. Once in camp, it appeared completely clear, so sat and gazed upwards for a bit. There is a curious illusion with the trees blocking the lower part of the sky where light pollution usually exists, that makes the sky appear darker than it actually is. I didn't take any comparison shots from the observing field, but broke out the venerable Nikon 16mm fisheye. Finally with the full-frame sensor of the 6D, I got back the full 180 degrees corner-to-corner field of view I used to enjoy with film. North is generally up, the Big Dipper dominating the upper part of the field, with Arcturus just below center and brilliant Jupiter at far right. Unfortunately Mars, Saturn and the center of the Milky Way weren't high enough to appear, and we weren't about to stay up much later, but the 30 second exposure is pretty impressive!



Surprisingly we rose early Tuesday morning, and hit Yavapai cafeteria for a mediocre breakfast and then continued out to the original site of the star party at Yavapai Point. I was interested in revisiting where I spent many happy days showing magnified views of the Canyon to visitors to attract them to the evening's observing. This time it was a test of optics and camera as I used the Canon 6D with the TEC 140 telescope and field flattener corrector lens for the first time. One of the favorite places to point out for people was the beach down by Phantom Ranch Campground where the river rafters would pull up for breaks. With the 20X binoculars I used to use, hikers and rafters could easily be spotted, about 3 miles away and a mile below us. Nearby is a turn in the South Kaibab Trail where hikers can usually be seen. In a moment of inspiration, I took a 6-frame mosaic, easily assembled in Photoshop, but how to display the 16,000+ pixel wide image in a blog that limits images to 1,500 max, still showing some details visible in the original? I decided to show the mosaic in low resolution, but a few scenes at full res, the resultant view shown at left. Even at 10am, seeing was a limiting factor, but overall sharpness was quite good - can't wait to get it under a dark sky looking upwards.

 

 

Unfortunately, the chance to try the TEC at night never materialized. At the star party, you are frantically busy with visitors till some moment between 10 and 11pm when they magically disappear. While this would seem a good time to do some imaging, this is when the astronomers sweep in with their vehicles to pick up scopes and even with parking lights would disrupt an imaging session. Better to play with gear without a group around! I did have a brief window to shoot the 6D with the venerable 70-200 Canon zoom. With the smaller APS sensor of the XSi camera, it always performed admirably. But how would it work with the 6D's sensor over twice as large? That is what I hoped to find out. After the public left Tuesday night, I mounted the camera on the bracket atop my C-14 scope for some tracked shots. As predicted, cars were coming in to collect their gear, but got a couple shots. First up was the wide shot at left taken at 70mm focal length showing Scorpius with Mars at left and Saturn at upper left center. Immediately it was seen the C-14 tube was blocking part of the view! It had never been an issue with smaller sensors but it was for this camera... This shot is a single 60 second exposure at ISO 3200 at F/3.2 - pretty amazing for the field shown! Zooming in to eliminate the tube obstruction, I took a few frames of the narrower field at right at 105mm focal length. This is a stack of 4 frames of 2 minutes each, so 8 minutes total exposure. We miss Mars in this view, but the nebulosity around Antares is easily seen, as is Messier 4 to Antares' right, as well as the dark nebulosity headed towards the "Prancing Horse" in Ophiuchus. Looking carefully at the dark clouds you can pick out the majority of the Pipe Nebula at bottom and the Snake Nebula a little above it.

Fortunately, there are a LOT of pixels to combine when making a 1600 pixel wide image for the blog. The camera puts out an image nearly 5,500 pixels wide, and if you look at the image at full resolution, the corners look pretty lousy! Shown at left is a full-rez crop of the above image at left. While that image looked just slightly bloated, at full scale, the coma and defocus is apparent. While you might decide that the lens isn't suitable for imaging any more, I've got to look into where in the field to focus. I believe I focused at the center - focusing closer to the edge might give better overall images for a final result.





Those were the only night-time images taken. The several hours of public observing grinds on you and you don't really feel like staying too late as the sun hits the tent early in the morning! Life in camp was fun... Roger and I typically ate out at Maswick or elsewhere, so didn't waste effort packing food, cooking utensils, or time and effort to cook. We did have lots of camp "visitors"! The last few years elk have been common company and every day they would cruise through camp feeding on the young oak leaves they desired. This one was a young female, but still was reaching a good 8 feet up into the trees for the right leaves. She seemed unconcerned of our presence - a few minutes after the image at left (taken with 300mm lens), she walked right behind Jose from San Diego! Jose was trying to take a selfie with his phone, but while watching it live, forgot to push the button for an unforgettable shot!

We needed to head back early on Thursday after 3 nights there, two while set up observing for the public. With the crescent Moon as an early target, I'd usually set up on that at 240X or so - bigger than most astronomers ran their scopes. As it got darker and everyone was on the moon, or Jupiter or Mars, I'd move to M-13 where 120X or so did amazing things to the globular cluster. Later, I'd often re-show the moon to those that missed it earlier, usually to great fanfare! There were many memorable meetings with the public, not only Americans, but from all over the world Just the last night we had observers from Argentina, Guatemala, Finland, Egypt, Serbia, and from all points of the U.S. The event has grown steadily from the first one in '91 when me and 3 friends from the Tucson club set up for the public. It is now a big deal with hundreds of astronomers over the course of the week and several thousand public visitors every night. After years of Park effort, the International Dark-Sky Association awarded the Grand Canyon National Park provisional "Dark Sky Park Status" where the night sky will be protected by controlling lighting to minimize pollution, assuring that visitors will continue to join us and stare in wonder at the Milky Way transiting overhead every June. I'm gratified that this event has stimulated interest in our dark sky heritage, and hopefully will continue long into the future! Think about coming to join us!