TACO in Utah

by Darrell Lee

NPS has a map of volunteers. I didn't look at it in detail, but recall that Utah national parks have 87,000 volunteer hours annually, and CA parks have about 250,000 volunteer hours.

9/16
We had clear Bryce skies last night, and the viewing was wonderful. Bryce Canyon's skies are as good as the other "great" dark skies sites I've been to - Texas Star Party and Shingletown Star Party – probably better, as there is no sky glow on any horizon. I got my best-ever views of NGC 891, the edge-on spiral galaxy in Andromeda, in the park's C11. I've seen it many times in my 10" and 18" scopes, and in Renato's 12.5" scope, but I've never seen so much detail before. I was able to see the dust lane that bisects it, but I could also see other mottled dark and light areas with faint color, much like looking at our own Milky Way.

It cleared up enough so we could get out the solar scopes in front of the visitor center yesterday afternoon. The Park has a 70 mm. Coronado solar scope on a Celestron CG-5 mount, about a $4000 package.

At night, I operated the park's Celestron CPC1100 with Skyalign. It has a built-in compass and GPS, so it knows where you are, which way is north, and what time it is. All you have to do is align it on three bright objects, and it flawlessly found every target object the rest of the night. I was very impressed with the mount, the scope, and the views through it, even with the park's Orion Stratus eyepieces. The 1.25" eps (13 and 17 mm.) have TeleVue parfocal adapters Allen-screwed into 2" adapters. It's a neat setup.

We had three volunteers and two paid rangers showing the sights to the tourists (about 150/night, I'm told). We try to show them different objects in our different scopes. I had my scope on M17, M11, NGC 7331, M31, and M27. After the tourists left, we stayed up another hour to midnight looking at other objects (NGC 7009 [the Saturn Nebula], M15 and M2, Struve 2816, Herschel's Garnet Star, M74, M39, Stephan's Quintet) together. We're having a barbecue with bratwurst and hamburgers tonight at the head astronomy volunteer's quarters and are going to dinner together Sunday night. The lead astro volunteer Jim has been here all summer, and spent 6 months here last year. The other astronomy volunteer has been here a month, and extended his time for 2 weeks to fill in for another volunteer who cancelled. Both of them have been here in previous years.

9/17/06
This is my fourth day at Bryce Canyon. Cold (32ºF) this morning, and only warmed up to 50 this afternoon (and yesterday). I worked the first two, and visited all the park vista sites the last two days. We export Thursday programs to local state parks and national forest campsites. MWF we set up solar scopes during the day for a couple of hours, do some duty at the information desk (2 hours on MW), and set up for nighttime viewing about 8 p.m. When the tourists get out of the 8 p.m. program, they come over to the employee parking lot behind the visitor center, and we show them sights through the telescopes for a couple of hours MWF. We have from 2-3 astronomy volunteers all summer, and 5 rangers in the astronomy program. Friday night two rangers were out there with three volunteers. One of the rangers gave a constellation tour with a green laser pointer, and the rest of us showed the tourists things through our scopes. We get 80-150 tourists/night, and 100 or more each day for solar viewing.

The road into the park goes for 18 miles. I took photos at all the vista sites Saturday, and walked uphill 1/2 mile from Sunset Point to Upper Inspiration Point and back. Today I walked to Yovimpa Point, 1.6 miles each way. I've seen Mule Deer, Red Fox, Pronghorn, Elk footprints, 3 Blue Grouse, 2 Golden Eagles, and the threatened Utah Prairie Dog (3 lb. rodents with white tails).

The lead volunteer, Jim Clossen, was camped next to me at the Texas Star Party this spring. We remember talking to each other, but I never imagined we'd be working together in Utah.

Darrell Lee