Grand Canyon's 22nd Annual Star Party will be held on both
South and North Rims from June 16-23, 2012.
For eight days in June, park visitors will explore the wonders of the night sky on Grand Canyon National Park's South Rim with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association and on the North Rim with the Saguaro Astronomy Club of Phoenix.
Amateur astronomers from across the country will volunteer their expertise and will offer free nightly astronomy programs and free telescope viewing.
Visitors will have the chance to view the planet Saturn along with a wide assortment of star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae by night, and the sun and planet Mercury by day. Grand Canyon is one of the best night sky observing sites in the United States because it has some of the darkest skies and cleanest air in the country.
Participants will experience spectacular views of the universe! Everyone dress warmly, since temperatures drop quickly after sunset - even during the summer months.
Here's a look at the 2011 Star Party, an overview of how things were set up, with the viewing area by the Visitor Center. Also included are some interviews with some of the astronomers from prior years.
Welcome to this week’s webisode of Insider’s Look at Grand Canyon. Hi, I’m Ranger Patrick Gamman and today
I’m joined by Ranger Marker Marshall. She’s here to talk about the Star Party. Marker, what’s that all about?
Well, the 21th annual Grand Canyon Star Party is coming up in 2011, June 18 through 25. The Star Party always
takes place for eight nights in June, the month when the sky is most likely to be clear. They pick the dates
to avoid the light of the moon so the dates change a bit from year to year. It takes place on both rims at
once. The Saguaro Astronomy Club of Phoenix provides the volunteers and telescopes for the North Rim and the
Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association does the same thing for the South Rim.
So, Marker, how does this actually work?
On the North Rim about ten telescopes- as many as fit on the terrace of the Grand Canyon Lodge- are set up
after dark. There are also special astronomy slide show programs at the Grand Canyon Lodge auditorium. Check
at the North Rim Visitor Center for times and programs.
On the South Rim, for the first time, everything will happen around the Grand Canyon Visitor Center. The
employee parking lot behind the Visitor will be filled with as many as 50 telescopes a night. Parking is
available in lots 1 through 4, plus the village Route shuttle bus stops there until 11:00 pm. There will be a
slide show nightly at 8:00 p.m., most likely in the new theater. Slide show seating will be somewhat limited,
so arrive a few minutes early. Then the telescope viewing takes place behind the building, well into the
night. It is a wonderful event on either rim, you just go from telescope to telescope and you can see the
rings of Saturn in one telescope. In others, you'll see globular clusters and open clusters and nebulae and
lost of far-away galaxies. There are also usually a few telescopes set up somewhere by day, to observe the
sun or Venus. It's pretty amazing.
Sounds like a lot of fun. But do folks need to sign up or reserve anything in advance?
Nope. There’s no sign-up, except for the astronomers. You just show up and enjoy the telescopes and the
knowledge that the volunteers share with you. I do recommend bringing a red flashlight so you can walk around
safely without impacting your night vision. You can make one for yourself by covering any flashlight with red
cellophane, or red nail polish, or even red magic marker. You can use a white flashlight too, but just point
it at the ground and not in anyone's eyes.
Also, dress warmly since temperatures drop quickly after sunset. The slide show is different almost every
night, and there is a lot to see through the telescopes, so come night after night, if you’d like, but do
come June 18-25. It’s a pretty special annual event.
So, now, to get folks excited for this year's Star Party, lets hear some astronomer interviews from previous
years.
So I’m here with the leader of a real neat group, Jim Palmer. Jim, could you tell us a bit about yourself and
your group?
Our group’s from the Phoenix area, here’s about ten of us. And we’re known as a ‘Red Light District’ and
that’s because all of our tripods on our telescopes have red lights on them, and it keeps people from
tripping over the corners of the tripod. And we come up here and make a big party out of this.
Excellent! Well, thanks for coming up to the park to share all this stuff with the visitors here. Do you
have any memorable stories that you’d like to share?
We’ve met a lot of people from all over the world, which we enjoy. So they talk about their skies
differently than as we see them. And then, of course, we’ve had people come up here that have gotten married
here at the rim and then they come out afterwards and they spend the night with us stargazing here in June
when they’re up here. And we had a group of tourists from Italy, a whole busload that lined up, and we would
tell the interpreter what we were looking at and then she would translate to the entire group. And then we’d
get this line of 60 people all of a sudden lined up at the scope. And it’s just kind of a neat function to
do.
My name is Bill Lofquist. I’m with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, who sponsors this event. And I
have a Dobbsonian style of telescope, but it’s based on the Newtonian reflector, which was developed by Sir Isaac Newton way back when he lived in England two or three centuries ago.
It’s very simple. It has a 12 ½ inch mirror, which takes in the light from a distant object. It’s curved and
reflects the light back up to a smaller mirror, which is called a secondary mirror. That’s the primary down
there. And that reflects the light- it’s at a 45° angle- out through the eyepiece, which magnifies the light. So, we can put different strengths of eyepieces in it to get more or
less power. So it’s a very simple telescope. You can get small Dobbsonian scopes like this, which are very, very good for beginners, but they’ll last you a lifetime.
That’s amazing something Sir Isaac Newton made is still being used- and used well- today.
It was revolutionary back in his day and it still holds up. It’s very solid, very simple and a lot of fun.
Folks, I’ve moved down the parking lot a little bit further and I’m here with Randy Peterson.
Randy, could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Sure! I’m an amateur astronomer with the East Valley Astronomy Club out of the east Phoenix area. I’ve been
coming to the Grand Canyon Star Party for about 15 years, other than missing one time because of work. And
you meet all kinds of people from all over the world here, which is a lot of fun and is pretty exciting.
Thanks! Could you tell me what are some of the things you like to look at through your telescope. Is it
planets, is it galaxies? What’s your thing? What do you really like?
Well, from here I like looking at galaxies. We do a lot of outreach parties in the Phoenix area and you
basically cannot see galaxies from Phoenix because of light pollution. So, from here, you can show the
general public a lot of different galaxies and they say, “Hey! I see that!” Whereas in Phoenix, if you try to
show them galaxies, they generally say, “I don’t see anything.” So, I like to show them galaxies from here.
Well, Randy thanks so much for all the years you’ve been coming out here, and I hope you enjoy the dark
night skies of Grand Canyon.
Thank you very much. I enjoy being here and thanks for the interview.
We’ll catch you folks next time.
NPS/Marker Marshall
Telescopes ready for night sky viewing.
On the South Rim, events will include a slide show nightly at 8:00 p.m., followed by telescope viewing behind the Grand Canyon Visitor Center. Parking is available in lots 1 through 4, and the Village Route shuttle bus runs every half-hour until 11:00 p.m. To make sure you get a seat at the slide show, arrive a few minutes early.
On the North Rim, telescopes will be set up on the porch of the lodge every evening, with some possibility of daytime scopes available as well. Bulletin boards at the Visitor Center will list additional events such as star talks and special slide show programs in the Grand Canyon Lodge auditorium.
Bring a flashlight to make your way safely to the telescope area; red flashlights are best but a white flashlight pointed down and turned off when you get to the telescopes works too. A red flashlight can be made by covering any flashlight with red cellophane or painting the lens with red nail polish or even a red magic marker. For more on why red flashlights are so helpful, click here. Although many telescopes come down after 11:00 p.m., on nights with clear, calm skies some astronomers will continue to share their telescopes well into the night.
The event is free (other than paying the park entrance fee of $25.00 per vehicle, good for 7 days of coming and going to either rim.) No reservations are needed except for astronomers wishing to share their telescopes, who register through the astronomy clubs sponsoring the event. Come for a night, or for the whole 8 night-event. Explore the Grand Canyon by day, and the universe by night!
Jim O'Connor of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association,
on dark adaptation of the eye and the value of red flashlights
Humans only need 8 hours of sleep, maybe less, each night but there are more hours of night in most latitudes for much of the year. We tend to live a diurnal life, so we need eyes that can fill our needs both in light and dark environments. To do so, the eye has two types of cells; cones are used mainly for color vision, rods for black and white in low light levels. In daytime we need detail to live our lives, but at night our primary need is threat detection. The rods work best at detecting motion, for night survival. Since threats tend to sneak up from the side or behind, the rods are placed at the periphery of our eye while the cones occupy the central part of our vision. The effect is that at night we can detect motion at the edge of our view. Near the front we don't see so well at night, but if we look a bit to the side objects ahead of us can pop into view. Astronomers call this averted vision, and it is used to find faint objects in an eyepiece.
Rods don't work on their own; they are inert. Their type of nerve cell need a chemical to enable their function. The body does not produce this chemical in daytime. It takes a very low light level sensed by the eyes to produce this chemical called rhodopsin, or visual purple. When the light is detected at a low level for 20 minutes or so, the body starts producing rhodopsin and night vision starts setting in. The other contributor to night vision is the pupil opening, but that goes to maximum within a few minutes of dark exposure. The big player in night vision is rhodopsin, and that takes from 20 to 40 minutes for humans to start benefiting from it. A key trait of this feature is that rhodopsin is photoreactive. It only takes a few seconds of bright light to cause the rhodopsin to decay into two parts with a photosensitive reaction, and the rods stop working. Then the cycle starts again. It is an interesting trait that deep red lights do not trigger the neutralization of the rhodopsin, so astronomers and safety officials use red lights for night lighting to allow night vision to continue. Since, unless the light is monochromatic like a laser, even red light has elements from other colors, even a bright red light can reduce the rhodopsin so a dim red light is best for maximizing after-dark eye behavior.
Did You Know?
In November of 1934, the Grand Canyon Civilian Conservation Corps began working on a trans-canyon telephone line. Starting at Indian Garden, they progressed downward to the Colorado River. It was necessary to complete this portion of the line first before the onset of extreme summer heat.
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