Day 1 - Sarasota, FL to Jackson, Mississippi

On the road by 7:15, we had partly to mostly cloudy skies all day with some rain thrown in in the Florida panhandle. We drove 757 miles, 520 of them trying to get out of Florida. That state goes on forever! There were no accidents, traffic was moderate to light and driving was very pleasant. There was one glitch (always is, right?) Soon after leaving Florida, I noticed a wobble in a tire at certain speeds. It was not very noticeable at first but after a while, it became quite annoying. We realized that most shops were closing on the stretch we were on from Hattiesburg to Jackson, MS, so we started looking for a place and at Magee, MS we saw a Walmart with a Tire and Lube shop. We got there at 6:00 PM their time. They were open until 7:00. Inspecting the tires revealed that tread separation was occurring in the right rear tire. So we now have 2 brand spanking new tires.

We got to the motel at 7:45 CDT and ended the day with omelets at IHOP.

Anticpation

We leave Sarasota Monday, June 29. I want to get on the road by 7:00 AM. Our goal is to reach Jackson, Mississippi Monday evening, Amarillo, Texas for Tuesday night and Flagstaff, Arizona for Wednesday. We have a couple days in AZ to visit my brother in Scottsdale and go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We have been to the south rim a few times. So we will spend the 4th of July at the Grand Canyon! Cool! We should arrive at NABR Sunday, July 5.

I give all this info because, while I will have a laptop computer, I don't know what access to wifi we will have along the way. (I do not have an iPhone.)

4 days until we leave.

Some technical information about telescopes on the trip

I have heard that Natural Bridges National Monument (NABR) has a Celestron CPC series 11 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope with goto and GPS. It is mounted on wheeley bars and is rolled out of the visitor center at the edge of the parking lot. It has a white light solar filter for viewing the Sun. I'll confirm that once I get there.

I am taking a Lunt 60mm H-Alpha Solar-Telescope with B1200 blocking filter and 2" Crayford Focuser. From the Lunt website:

The LS60THa is a complete Solar Telescope. The refractor based system has a precision aligned singlet chromatic lens with a 60 mm aperture. The front singlet lens reduces the stray-light over an achromat by half. With the matched collimation lens set, it also fully corrects for on axis coma, astigmatism and de-centering aberrations and provides a full spherically corrected flat-field Solar-Telescope. The focal length is 500mm providing a ~4.5 mm image thru a 12 mm blocking filter. Fine adjustment is achieved with a Crayford style focuser with 10:1 reduction.

An internal etalon with tune adjustment allows for a <0.8 Angstrom bandpass.




http://luntsolarsystems.com/

My Summer in Utah

Welcome to my blog. For the next 7 weeks or so I will be posting about my time in Utah. What follows here is a revised version of a facebook note I posted in May.

PREFACE: Most of you know I love Astronomy. It's really cool that I get to teach it. My students know that when we have a star gaze, we can see relatively few stars because of the light pollution in town. If we get to go to the countryside, we see many more stars but there is no where near us where the skies really DARK. An organization called the International Dark Sky Organization has been formed and is promoting awareness of light pollution and attempting to preserve sites that have little light pollution. They have found a way to quantify how dark a location's night sky is. So far the darkest skies they have documented in the USA is at Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah.

Most National Park Rangers are not primarily trained in Astronomy. So they have established a program for volunteer experts to come and lead the Astronomy program at the parks that want it.

THE MAIN EVENT: I applied and was accepted to be what they call the Astro VIP at that darkest site in the US, Natural Bridges National Monument. I will be there from July 6 to August 3. I am so excited about this, I can barely contain myself. This is like hitting a grand slam, that they would pick me to participate in the astronomy program at the darkest site for a whole month.

Even better is the fact that we work 4 days (nights) and have 3 days off to explore the region. Utah has 5 national parks and tons of other stuff to see.

If you live in the west and have the time, I would love to see you and show you the skies there. My wife and I will be driving there and back.

Here's the web site.
http://www.nps.gov/nabr/