The Grand Canyon Star Party is unique! You get to view the heavens under really dark skies at night, and you get to see the awesome views of the Grand Canyon during the day (and sleep somewhere in between).
For this privilege, we are designated as volunteers for the Astronomy public outreach at the Grand Canyon. I believe I talked to more people about Deep Sky Objects and Video Astronomy during that one week than I ever have.
We had about 5 telescopes at the entrance to the viewing area showing live Video Astronomy images on monitors to people as they came in.
They then could go to any of the over 50 other telescopes of various sizes and shapes to look through eyepieces at Jupiter, Saturn, etc.
I found that the folks who came by were all extremely interested in learning about the night sky, from young to old. Some asked me to show multiple targets ... I think they almost couldn't believe they were seeing a live image on the screen from the camera looking though my 8" telescope. I would move the telescope to a new target and then after a few seconds the Hercules Cluster would appear on the screen, or the Cigar Galaxy, or the Whirlpool Galaxy (that one always produced a really big Wow). For the first part of the week I used my Xterminator II (upgraded XT828) with a NexGen F3.3 reducer on the 8" telescope. So it did not take very long after slewing to a new target for the its image to pop up on my 22" screen, which made it easy for a group to see. Later in the week I switched to my DS2.3+ for wider FOV images.
Here are some of my live screen captures.
Here are some of my live screen captures.
All in all it was a great experience for my wife and I, and we had time during to the day to be tourists and see multiple parts of the Grand Canyon again (our last visit was over 25 years ago).
On July 22, we got up early and went to the rim to watch the effects of Sunrise out over the canyon. Click on the link below to see a 30 second time lapse video of the Sun pouring its light into the Grand Canyon for an hour as it rose.
On July 22, we got up early and went to the rim to watch the effects of Sunrise out over the canyon. Click on the link below to see a 30 second time lapse video of the Sun pouring its light into the Grand Canyon for an hour as it rose.
We even got to stop by Meteor Crater on the way back home.
We hope to return to the GCSP again in the future!
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