“Ooohs!” and “Aaaahs!” at the Grand Canyon

I returned Sunday night from the Grand Canyon where I spent 8 days at the North Rim Lodge with about 16 other astronomers showing the guests of the lodge and park the wonders of the night sky with our telescopes, which were set up on the Lodge’s veranda.

Me on the Veranda (photo by William Dellinges)

This event was coordinated by Steve Dodder, a member of my club, The Saguaro Astronomy Club. Steve did an awesome job of coordinating the event. We had large crowds, racked up thousands of views for our guests, and had a wonderful time together as we shared with the common people in the streets views of their universe they did not even know existed.  The only blemish on the week was that Steve’s request for good weather was turned down. We had clear skies only two nights, and partly cloudy or cloudy skies the rest of the time. Still, the people who joined us in the Lodge auditorium for a 30-minute slide show, or on the veranda as it got dark, were enthusiastic, grateful to us for sharing our hobby with them, and full of good questions.

A week-long event like the GCSP-NR is a grueling event for an amateur astronomer, but the payoff comes to us in the expressions of wonder our guests make while at the eyepiece. I was paid richly by hundreds of expressions like “Wow!” and “Oh my God!” and “Holy cow!”  I even had one little Italian girl (maybe 8 years old) who spoke no English peer into my telescope to view M13 . She gasped, turned to her papa, and squealed, “Oh, la bella stellae!”

M13 (Hubble Space Telescope)

In the daytime, we slept late then arose to do what one can do at the Grand Canyon North Rim. I spent many hours sitting on the Lodge veranda gaping at the awesome spectacle of the Canyon.

Looking SE from the Lodge

The Lodge is perched on a narrow isthmus of rock. Just a few feet from the veranda walls the land drops nearly 2000 feet straight down into the Roaring Springs Canyon to the East and the Transept Canyon to the West. I often felt my palms sweat and my stomach tighten as I looked down into these gorges worn by 6 million years of rain, wind and snow.  Others in our group hiked parts of the Canyon; some took day trips to nearby places like Point Imperial and Cape Royal. Others shot hundreds of pictures with their digital cameras, others napped, and still others lolled around in the Lodge.

The group in our campground was a great bunch of people! We had about 10 campsites reserved for us and most of us were from the Saguaro club. But we also had great help from people from Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Tucson and points even farther away. One afternoon, two of the couples on our row of sites spontaneously set up lunches for us.  We began with a Mexican buffet at one site, and walked 150 feet to the other site for awesome beef satay with peanut sauce and cucumber relish. (The lady who prepared this was the wife of a SAC member and is from Indonesia.)

Next year’s GCSP-NR is scheduled for June 5-12, 2010. If you are planning a vacation around that time of  year, consider the star party as a great addition to what will be a wonder-filled vacation. But act fast-the Lodge books up almost a year in advance, and the Kaibab Lodge, a few miles north, likewise books up quickly. If you are a camper, the camp ground should have availability up to a few months before the event.

Hope to see you there next year! I can’t wait! Just 346 more days (as of today)!

For a PDF copy of Phoenix’s East Valley Astronomy Club’s Newsletter, which contains a great article on this star party, click here.