Siegfried Jachmann asked that I post this on Utah Astronomy: Rodger, Would you post this on Utah Astronomy for me. I still can't get through on that. I can read but can't post for some reason. Siegfried I went up to Idaho this weekend to go to the Friday night Craters of the Moon star party sponsored by the Idaho Falls and Mountain Home Astronomical Societies. This is a wonderful event. I picked up Bruno in Idaho Falls and then we drove through Arco to Craters. If you could script the perfect conditions for a star party, you would script Friday night at Craters. As dark as Bryce Canyon, shirt sleeve temperature, few bugs, and excellent seeing from dusk until we broke down after midnight. And I do mean excellent seeing. We had planned on watching Jupiter and several satellite events. It came off perfectly. We watched Io going in front of Jupiter, Callisto going behind, Io's shadow going on, Ganymede coming out and later slowly going into Jupiter's shadow, and Io coming off planet. All this in incredible detail. It was the night of the year. I have been up there three times now, the first was 6 ? 8 years ago. My memory is shot, years just roll together. Each time the prospects have looked suspect on the drive out there and each time they turned out to be about as good as you could ever hope for. A science teacher from Bonneville High brought out a bus-load of students. All in all I would estimate about 100 guests. Shortly before breaking we did look at a few other highlights. We took a look at Andromeda, E-Lyrae, Iota and Eta Cass. The doubles and multiple stars were excellent. E Lyrae was high, just past meridian. All 4 at 256x were just beautiful. My only regret is that we didn?t get there earlier. We got there as dusk was just starting, direct sunlight was gone. We picked a spot and set up. It was already dusky as I took some pictures. I really enjoy the social aspect of astronomy. I met a nice guy named Lowell Frauholz, nice Irish name, and I want to say John Staples and his wife but I could easily have the first name wrong. I?m terrible with names unless I hear them several times. There were 16, 17 1/2, and 20" reflectors, several SCT's of varying sizes. I didn't count but with hindsight guess maybe 12 scopes. We drove back Friday night. We had other plans for Saturday. Weather came in up there also and I suspect it may not have been good that night. We drove home Sunday through 4 hours of rain. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Taylor" <robtaylor3661@comcast.net> To: <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 9:39 AM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Natural Bridges Saturday Night
To add to Roger's summary at Natural Bridges last week-end: Around 7:00 pm on Saturday I joined the Rangers in their housing area for a BBQ in the park housing area and had a chance to talk to many of them. I was the sole representative of SLAS and found the Rangers very interested in Astronomy and answered a lot of their questions as best I could. They would love to have us back. The head Ranger (Scott Ryan) wants a SLAS hat. We talked about the Dark Sky designation, astronomy and telescopes in general for a while before I headed over to check out the star Party area.
As expected we had a group of people who did not get the message that the Saturday Night Star Party had been cancelled. I went over to visitor center parking lot where the star party was sceduled to find a family sitting there waiting for the scopes. Not wanting to disappoint I set up my scope as the clouds were showing signs of thinning. The clouds soon opened up enough to give us a good view of the sky, first it was just Jupiter, and then it opened up in the Cygnus area, soon more and more opened up. We had about a 75% open sky from about 8:30pm to 10:15pm. Seeing the clearing skies other families came over from the camp site and joined our small but intimate group. Before long we had a good crowd, 15-20. We had a lot of fun and a handful of Rangers from Natural Bridges including a few that came up from Arizona joined the park visitors. They all asked lots of questions and had lots of requests and kept me quite busy, especially a couple of very enthusiastic young ladies who were fascinated with the sky. Even after clouds starting filling in all the gaps several of the rangers stayed for a while and continued to ask questions about SLAS doing star parties in Arizona and astronomy in general. They said they would love for SLAS to come down and visit them in Northern AZ. We had one couple drive out from Blanding just for the star party but unfortunately by the time they arrived even sucker holes were few and far between. I stayed and talked to them till about 11pm when they headed back and I packed up. Unfortunately no other SLAS members joined in on Saturday having all made their decisions early in the evening and made other plans.
While the skies were open the seeing was fairly steady on Saturday and we had some excellent views. The skies at Natural bridges are very good. There are no bright spots on the horizon anywhere. While I was there I never saw an inky black sky, possible due to the lower altitude (5,300') and the front that was on the horizon but the viewing was very good. I went down on Thursday and had Thursday night to myself and had a wonderful night viewing and photographing. Thursday night's sky was not very steady but the transparency was excellent, not so great for photos but it settled down after midnight and I got some keepers. I stayed out till a little after 3am when the long drive finally caught up with me. Friday was a very good night for the star party with 6 scopes and a handful of SLAS members we stayed busy with the small but very interactive crowd. Quite fun and enjoyable.
The park is smaller and more remote than either Bryce or Capital Reef, it's a National Monument as opposed to a park but it is part of the park service. The whole area is fascinating if you've never been down there. About a 325 mile drive from SLC so it's a trip. The nearest town is Blanding which is about 35-40 minutes away to the east. There are no services near the park so gas up and bring what you need, don't count on getting it there. This is something we should consider again for next year.
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