The Grand Canyon Star Party (North Rim), 2010

I just returned to Cave Creek Friday night after a week at the Grand Canyon (North Rim) for the annual Grand Canyon Star Party. I returned as high as a kite and this post will explain why.

WHAT IS A “STAR PARTY”?

You may be wondering just exactly what a “star party” is, especially if you have never been to one. Think of a star party as you would any other party, except that instead of music, dancing, games or food being the focus, the focus (pun intended) is on the sky overhead. Amateur astronomers bring their telescopes and show the public the wonders of the night sky. People are free to mill about and take a peek at the sky through any of a number of telescopes that their owners will have trained on various night sky delights. As they take in the views at the eyepieces, the telescope owners will explain to them what they are seeing and how to get the most out of their view. (There is definitely a technique to seeing faint and ancient light in finely-figured glass!)

GOOD COMRADES

A great star party needs great comrades, and I was blessed this year to share the North Rim with some of Arizona’s finest amateur astronomers. Every year, the Grand Canyon Star Party accommodates guests at both sides of the Canyon—the South Rim and the North Rim. The Tucson Amateur Astronomers Association covers the South Rim while the Saguaro Astronomy Club (or SAC, my club) takes care of the North Rim. (This way, both teams have about the same amount of drive time—roughly 7 hours!)

Steve Dodder (of SAC) coordinates the North Rim events.  This is his third year of doing this and he did a superb job this year of assembling a team of knowledgeable and talkative astronomers to entertain guests at the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim.

There was a sizeable contingent from SAC, including myself and my two friends, Jimmy Ray and Darrell Spencer. (The three of us combined to rent a cabin at the Lodge rather than camp out in the campground a mile and a half north of the Lodge.) Besides Steve Dodder, there was also Lynn Blackburn, Chris Hanrahan, and Al Steiwing. In addition to these, Tom and Jennifer Polakis helped out a few nights at the Kaibab Lodge, a private facility off National Park land about 20 miles north of the Lodge. There were also another eight or so astronomers from all over the United States, and since I’ll forget some of their names, I just won’t list them by name.

PETS AT THE CABIN

I’ll get to a description of the nightly festivities in a moment, but first, I have to tell you about three furry friends we made at our cabin. One was a chipmunk we named Roscoe. He was a brave little rascal, coming right up to our door step as if he knew we were safe and had food. We gave him none as we did not want to train him to be a welfare case. Several times he tried to get into the cabin while we were there, and each time a flick of the foot or a growl would scare him off.

Then there was Pepe, a brown field mouse. Darrell had his food stored in a cardboard box (Jimmy and I both used sealed plastic containers). We came back to the cabin one day after a day trip in the area and Darrell opened his food box to make a sandwich when Pepe bolted out and scampered away. Darrell almost ruined his shorts, and we laughed so hard, we almost passed out at the high altitude (8255 feet). Pepe had managed to chew through a bag of bagels Darrell had, so Darrell had to toss the bagels. Pepe did not seem to bother us the rest of the week (Darrell figured out a way to store his food in a more mouse-proof way) and we thought we were Pepe-proof. But as we were leaving on Friday, Darrell found more mouse droppings in the bottom of his box, so Pepe must have found a new way to play the role of the 45% of Americans who are on the federal dole.

The third critter of interest was a Kaibab squirrel. These amazing creatures grow only on the Kaibab Plateau in northern Arizona and resemble a cross between a skunk (without the odor) and a squirrel.

(Arizona is a remarkable state. Our geography has created several distinct eco-systems, each isolated from the others by deserts, or canyons, or rivers. So whatever life develops in that eco-system tends to specialize in the environment and can be found nowhere else in Arizona—or the US, for that matter.)

AN ARSENAL OF TELESCOPES

Each day, we kept informal logs of how many people we think looked through our telescopes. (A few actually had manual counters with buttons they could click for each guest.) I estimated about 750 people looked through my 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (SCT) that week. Jimmy, with another 11-inch SCT, logged perhaps 850 to 900, but he was just off the Lodge’s door to the veranda, so everyone who came out of the lodge stopped at his scope first. Poor guy—he gave the same eyepiece speech dozens and dozens of times each night, eventually sounding like a tour guide! He did yeoman’s work!

Darrell set his 8-inch SCT up next to me and did a brisk business as well, doing SAC proud and providing great entertainment for the guests.

On my other side was Lynn Blackburn with his 8-inch SCT. Between Darrell and Jimmy was Chris with his 80mm Vixen refractor, a high-quality scope with rich wide fields of view perfect for views of the Milky Way from the North Rim. Al was in the second row with his 14-inch Dobsonian and 8-inch SCT, while Steve anchored the back corner with his monster 20-inch Dob. Next to Steve was another 20-inch Dob, and Jim Mahon, a good friend from Los Angeles, had his 14-inch Dob in the other rear corner. Two astronomers from NASA set up a 16-inch DOB, and a couple from Washington set up a 10-inch Dob. There were a couple of other scopes that week, but they were not there the entire week and I did not get a chance to meet their owners.

GUESTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

Most of the people at the Lodge were, of course, Americans on vacation, most of who did not know they were staying at the Lodge during the annual Star Party, but were thrilled when they learned of it. But there were also many guests from all over the world (Portugal, Scandinavia, Germany, Russia, France, England, China, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and Canada). Many of them planned their trips to coincide with the Star Party—it has become that well-known.

On more than one occasion I had to rely on a husband or wife (or parent) to translate for their family members while they were at the eyepiece so they would know how to find and observe the faint light we were collecting for them.

AWESOME SKIES

Having grown up in the Midwest, I was used to murky skies with high levels of light pollution. As a result, I was not accustomed to crisp views of truly dark skies and how the Milky Way could dominate such a sky. The Grand Canyon gave me a whole new perspective on great skies!

8255 feet above sea level combined with the dry desert air of Arizona can make for a window on space that is about as clear as it gets on this planet. When the Milky Way majestically rose around 10:30 pm, at first most people thought clouds were moving in. They were shocked when they learned that the glow as from billions of stars in the plane of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Not only were the vast star clouds of the Milky Way plainly visible—so were the things that are normally not visible, the so-called “dark nebulae”. (Astronomer E. E. Barnard discovered over a hundred of these clouds of pre-star gas and dust, clouds that have not yet condensed to form stars, and which do not have any nearby stars to light them up like the “bright nebulae.”) The dark nebulae are hard to see because of the light that is NOT there, but they were easy at the Canyon, tracing out gossamer threads of darkness that laced their way through the star clouds of Sagittarius, Scutum, Aquila and Cygnus.

There was also a wonderful slate of “deep sky” objects (things beyond our Solar System) that are normally considered to be binocular or telescope objects that were also visible to the unaided dark-adapted eye—M13 (the great Globular Cluster in Hercules), M17 (the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius), M7 (a wonderful open star cluster in Scorpius), even NGC 7000 (the North America Nebula in northern Cygnus).

Needless to say, with such great sky conditions, the views in the telescopes were stunning.

Saturn was always a big hit, mostly because it was the first thing visible each night, and also because people always seem to be amazed that it actually has rings (as if astronomers projected a slide of Saturn on their lenses to fool people!). Each night, hundreds of times you would hear, “Wow!” or “I can’t believe it’s real!” as people got their first-time ever view of Saturn through a telescope.

One night, we had really good air, so I ran the magnification up to 800x (a very high power for a small telescope), while most of the other astronomers were using 100x to 200x. As a result, Saturn filled about 1/3 of my eyepiece’s field of view and people who dropped by for a peak often gasped or shrieked at the sight! The rings were clearly visible as was the shadow of the rings cast by the Sun on the cloud tops of the gas giant. Also several moons were visible, as well as the shadow of Saturn on the rings BEHIND the planet. It moments of good seeing, the subtle cloud bands could be seen.

One little girl—her name was Katie—was really impressed by the view. She was about 8 years old and had a raspy voice, but when she put her eye on my 800x Saturn, she actually yelled, “Wow, this is the best Saturn EVER!” She then went around the crowded veranda telling everyone who would listen that my scope had the “best view of Saturn EVER” and so I had a line that lasted nearly 2 hours! When Katie’s parents made it to the scope, they agreed that Katie’s assessment was correct.

I was also amazed at how well people who were not trained as astronomers picked up the subtleties of deep sky observing. On several occasions, I showed people either M51 or Centaurus A. M51 is a beautiful spiral galaxy, seen face-on. It is nicknamed “the Whirlpool” (for obvious reasons when you see it). It is almost a twin of the Milky Way, in both size and approximate shape. Centaurus A is a large elliptical (ball-shaped) galaxy low in the summer sky. The neat thing about both of these is that they are undergoing collisions with other galaxies. As I coached people how to observe, they all could see the nuclei of M51 and the interloper that crashed into it about 100 million years ago. Others could clearly see the dark lane of dust that bisected Centaurus A as the giant elliptical (with a trillion suns, five times the size of the Milky Way) was colliding with a smaller flat spiral galaxy (like ours). I pointed out that in both cases, the larger galaxy always wins, and that in M51’s case, the smaller fuzzy patch was a wrecked galaxy, giant M51 having stolen most of its stars when it passed through M51. Likewise, Centaurus A has stolen most of the stars of the poor spiral that wandered too close and will end up a super-galaxy while the shattered hulk of a once great spiral limps away into the darkness of space.

I pointed out to my guests that such a scene had been enacted in the Milky Way several times as our galaxy has gobbled up many interlopers over the billions of years, and that in fact, we were going to be gobbled up in turn by a bigger fish, as M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) is approaching us and will collide with us in about 5 billion years. The outcome will be a super-galaxy and no more Milky Way.

People usually asked at this point if the stars ever hit each other in such a collision, but I pointed out that compared to galaxies, stars are very small and the odds of two stars hitting each other in a galactic collision are about as high as two flies running into each other in the Grand Canyon. Such is the size of space!

A DAY FOR LOOKING BACK DOWN BELOW

As people came to realize, our telescopes are actually time machines, letting them see events that took place millions of years ago. There is something magical about having your retina stimulated by light that began its journey when the dinosaurs were still alive, to realize that this very night, your body is having a chemical reaction with something that began its journey when T Rex was walking the plains of South Dakota!

But we took one day out to look back in time below our feet. We toured the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were treated to vistas and implications of time that were equally mind-numbing.

We went to Cape Royal and then to Point Imperial, two stunning view points on the North Rim. From there, we could see incredible rock sculpture, the rocks being carved by the great flood that created the Grand Canyon some six million years ago. We watched in fascination as the shadows of the clouds played across the dappled rock layers, creating a never-ending kaleidoscope of color and contrast.

There is just something about geology on this scale that numbs the mind and expands one’s awareness of our place in the scheme of things. That, combined with the panorama over our heads at night, always leads me to a special place of reverence and contemplation.

ARE THERE OTHERS OUT THERE?

Several times, people would ask me during a quiet moment on the veranda if I thought there was other life out there. I replied that as a scientist, I had to say, “No,” because we have found no evidence for it yet. We may someday, but right now, the facts don’t support any form of extra-terrestrial life. In fact, I added, we may be it. Puzzled, many people asked why. When I explained how unlikely it is for random chemical reactions to produce even an amino acid (let alone the thousands of proteins amino acids combine to form, many of which are absolutely vital for life), let alone for that life to survive and give rise to intelligent creatures capable of pondering their place in the universe, I said it is not likely that there is any other intelligent life, and maybe not even any other life of any kind. (Time may prove me wrong as some day a NASA probe finds evidence of microbial life somewhere, but I am not betting the farm we’ll find anything.)

Combine that with the highly unlikely chain of events that had to occur to lead to our existence—a universe that is governed by laws that work in such a way that three generations of stars had to form and rip themselves apart in death to create the heavy elements needed for life… that we live on a planet that is just the right size to support life… that the earth has a molten core that leads to active plate tectonics, which creates conditions perfect for the development of life… that we have a moon that is far oversized for its job (compared to the other planets), and that it formed by an impact from a Mars-sized body about 4 billion years ago in a collision that was at exactly the right angle to form the moon and not destroy the young earth in the process… that we live on the back edge of a quiet spiral arm in a huge galaxy, safe from the deadly radiation that rules the galactic center… that we live in a place where we can look out across the terrible reaches of space and see not only stars, but other galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and clusters of clusters of galaxies… The odds of all this being “just so” by pure random events has been estimated at less than 1 in 10 to the 10,000^th power!

It all blows my mind!

Then I think about the Father who created it some 13.7 billion years ago and wonder in silence at the vast intelligence and wisdom he has to create a world like ours and us in it. There is far too much balance, symmetry, and beauty in this world to be the results of pure random chance. I for one argue that an intelligence beyond anything we can imagine dreamed all of this up, and gave it to us as a gift of the highest love.

That is why I so love this amazing hobby!

Thank you, LORD God, for such an awesome world in which you display your wisdom and love!