Clear night at last

Linda shows the Navajo students how the telescope works.

So far, our expectations for the quality of the skies is batting zero.  Whenever we think it will be a good night, it is not and vise versa.  Tonight we thought we would be completely past the bad weather caused by the low pressure system passing through Northern Arizona, yet some of the clouds and humidity lingered into the night.  We also thought bringing 50 Navajo middle school students plus their teachers into the dome would be a mess.  That worked out better than I thought.


The kids had spent part of the day touring Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill before coming down to Anderson Mesa Station.  As it turned out, one of the telescope operators arrived late, so Linda and I were pressed into service to operate the 72-inch and teach the kids about what we do.  The kids arrived on a school bus and were broken up into six groups, which were rotated between six stations.  We let them move the telescope and send commands over the computer.  Most were excited about slewing a telescope as large as their school bus.  As often happens, the teachers had more questions than the kids.



Students crowded into the Warm Room.



After the kids left, we got started on our Near Earth Asteroid while waiting for our Trojan asteroid to rise high enough to observe.  The NEA (one of the larger ones) was last observed 25 years ago from Sweden.  That lightcurve got a very high rating and has nothing in common with the one we got Monday night.  We shall see if this data sheds any 'light' on the situation.  The humidity started out at about 50% but by 3 AM, had risen up into the 80's.  We toughed it out with our target disappearing over the horizon as Nautical Twilight flooded the sky with light.  We left the dome in our review mirror while watching the planetary conjunction to the east.