by Jamie Dillon
Among other attractions, we went to Meteor Crater and Grand Canyon, both of which were astounding. Jo and I headed to Prescott one of the days, got as far as Sedona. Rte 89A from Flagstaff to Sedona is described as a scenic highway. Starts thru pretty pine woods, then gets amazing. Oak Creek Canyon is surrounded by complex, impressive cliffs. Then you get to the Red Rocks, which are mindboggling and gorgeous. We'd had no idea. This is one of the most lovely drives I've ever done, up there with Hwy 1 thru the Big Sur.
OK, now for the juicy observing parts. I'd heard Anderson Mesa, a few miles out of Flagstaff, described in careful quantitative terms as having some of the best night skies on the planet. Really wanted to get a baseline here. The first night, Skiff invited me inside the compound on the top of the mesa where the Lowell Observatory has two big scopes, a 48" and a 72". That was fun in itself, with Felix set up between these two big domes. Every now and then there'd be a low mechanical growl, and a dome aperture would rotate. Skiff came out, whenever he had a break from his job of gathering data with the 72 on a set of blazars, to gawk along at the naked eye sky, peek thru the eyepiece. This is the guy who co-authored Luginbuhl and Skiff's Observing Handbook and Catalogue of Deep-Sky Objects, a pearl beyond price. He did the lists and text for the Bright Star Atlas. Brian Skiff is also forever helping people, including myself, on amastro.
Leaving that first night, when coming up on the big turnout where anyone can observe, not having seen anyone there at sundown, and wanting to stay on the road, I flipped on my lights. Bathed an observer with a big Dobs. point blank. Parked, went over to apologize. The victim turned out to be Bill Ferris, another amastryte, host of a major observing website, with whom I'd been corresponding about meeting up down in those parts. We patched it up, and the next night Ferris and I spent at that same turnout, observing together like old compadres.
Part 2 will describe what I saw in the scope. What I'll try to do is here do justice to the skies in northern Arizona, naked eye. There are stars to the horizon. We get that occasionally from Lake San Antonio and Cone Peak. There's a teeny lightdome from Phoenix to the south. Flagstaff puts up a 20° lightdome that's only about 20-25° wide, that fades around midnight when traffic dies out. (When you drive into Flag, you see a big sign naming it as an International Darksky City. Encouraging.) Doing star counts both nights, the limiting magnitude for me was around 6.5. Lots of stars, and a stupendous Milky Way overhead. But they have a quality to the sky there, that we don't even quantify in these parts, i.e., contrast. The North American Nebula was all shameless and obvious. I saw M4 and M5 naked eye for the first times ever. M15 was easy unaided. For the first time I saw a tail on the False Comet, heading due NW. With the scope, dark nebulae in the Scutum Starcloud jumped out. Lanes and spirals in the Whirlpool were breathtaking. Plus, Skiff's been counting empirically for years now, and they get something over 300 clear nights there a year. As Skiff puts it, there's a lack of aerosols in the air there. Not a lot of moisture suspending dust and pollutants.
Yes it made my mouth water. Now back home in Salinas, we had stars greeting us our first night back; since then we've been under the marine layer every night. But!, with memories of skies registered as truly dark in clear memory, it's encouraging to also remember that our sites right here are often thoroughly respectable. From the Peak, Henry Coe, Dinosaur Point, Lake San Antonio, Cone Peak, I've frequently been under skies I'm not ashamed of. A couple of years back, Alan Whitman, who lives in the mountains of B.C., wrote a note online dismissing California out of hand as not having really dark skies anywhere. He's wrong. We got 'em all over. And Devastated Area at Lassen and sure enough Bumpass lot, as you know, can get to legendary.
And in other good news, Skiff, Ferris, and Marilyn Unruh, bookshop owner in Prescott and AL bookservice Czarina, had all heard plenty about Fremont Peak as a mecca for darksky observing. Cool!
More very soon about telescopic adventures on the Mesa.
Posted on sf-bay-tac Jul 18, 2005 21:34:21 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Oct 10, 2005 11:48:47 PT