A visit to the Grand Canyon Star Party

On his first trip to the Grand Canyon Star Party, Dave Eicher joins thousands for a week of lectures, observing, and cosmic wonder.

Years ago, three big star parties dominated plans for astronomy enthusiasts in the United States. They were Stellafane, Riverside, and the Texas Star Party. Stellafane and the TSP are still chugging along, and sadly, the Riverside event is no more. But another huge player has been building for more than three decades now, and it is the largest star party in the country — the Grand Canyon Star Party. 

During the week of June 23, the Grand Canyon Star Party once again took place, and I attended for my first time ever. It is a very large event: perhaps 1,000 or more people are there each night, and the event goes on for more than a week. So, altogether, maybe 10,000 people or more attend the event, held near the visitor center at the canyon’s south rim. Most of those who attend are holiday visitors to the canyon and so are getting their first looks at the distant cosmos. 

The event has been coordinated for some years by the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association, now my home astronomy club, and coordinated with the park. Among the many rangers leading the way is the chief ranger in charge of the event, a great guy named Rader Lane. We had a wonderful time honoring Rader with his own asteroid, so now he has a remote place to explore! 

Now that I am in Tucson, it was about a 5-1/2-hour drive to get to the canyon, through Phoenix and Flagstaff. For a few days I lived in a house inside the park with my pals Kevin Schindler from Lowell Observatory and Cincinnati-area astronomy popularizer Dean Regas. Dean spoke on Monday night, Kevin spoke on Tuesday night, and I spoke on Wednesday night. My talk was on galaxies, the subject of a relatively recent book of mine, Galaxies, published by Random House. It was a big success to a big crowd, and a mob of people approached afterward, with many questions, including great queries from kids about black holes, astonishment over the huge distance scale of the universe, and all manner of things. Later, on the same night, I led a naked-eye stargazing tour, armed with a green laser pointer. That was great fun, talking about constellations, interesting objects, and the immensity of the universe. 

Following the main talks, the big reason for being there arrived — observing. Lemme tell you — the sky at the Grand Canyon is very dark. It is an astronomer’s paradise. Altogether, some 80 telescopes were set up in the parking lot areas adjacent to the visitor center, and we observed for two or three hours a night. Large scopes were there, including some big refractors and several Dobs in the range of 28 or 32 inches. Moreover, several observers had new generation image intensifiers that we attached to the scopes and which provided spectacular views of really faint nebulae and galaxies. 

We looked at many objects — especially with the larger scopes — but as with any star parties, too many of the scopes were aimed at the same 20 or 30 objects. That’s probably wise in part at this event to show the beginners some showpieces. Astonishing views of the Whirlpool Galaxy, globulars M3, M13, and M22, and planetaries like the Dumbbell Nebula and the Ring Nebula dominated. We also explored some really challenging, off-the-beaten path objects, and you’ll see some of those adventures appear in future stories. 

On one afternoon Kevin and I marched down into the canyon and worked a bit on Kevin’s project of identifying exactly where some of the historic pictures were taken when in the early 1960s astronauts were training at the canyon, preparing to go to the Moon. Again, I’ll write about this in more detail in separate stories. 

A huge star party under a dark sky in one of the most beautiful places in the United States? We could look down to the earliest rocks in the canyon and back in time a billion years, and then look into the eyepiece and see light from galaxies and quasars that had traveled every minute of that enormous span of time. 

If you can get to the Grand Canyon Star Party in the future, I heartily encourage you to do so. You will have a wonderful and very memorable experience.