First off, thanks to everyone that made it happen, the NPS staff at the Grand Canyon, (Chuck, Brian) TAAA and of course Dean.

We had great weather the whole week! I was worried because it was so late in June that I thought we would get hit with the “monsoon season” that we have here in Arizona. We did have some high winds the first couple of days that effected the big dobs and even the smaller scopes. There was a small fire on the North Rim that wasn’t much of a problem.

Best story to come out of the GCSP was a tour bus going by and the driver telling those onboard that we were “Stargazers” setting up for the night. A little girl, nose pressed to the window, being over heard asking her mother “Can we feed them mommy? Do they have to stay behind those ropes?”

We had people from all over (again) Elaine still holds the longest drive (Virginia) but was beaten for longest distance in the USA by Nancy from Florida (she flew in) and by Havre from France. It was good to see everyone again, Geoff from Chicago, “Mojo” and Jane from SF, and the rest.

Again we turned the GCSP into a food festival. Sunday SAC provided pizza, huevos rancheros were cooked up one morning by TAAA, Thursday Sirius Lookers served mostaccioli, and Saturday was the Ranger Cookout/Potluck at the Wahler’s. As always my jambalaya was a big hit at the Ranger Cookout. (I personally liked Sally Wahler’s slaw)

I became the power company, George had problems with his batteries starting Saturday night so I let him piggyback on my battery. Then there was a complaint about using the washroom as a battery charging station from the park rangers so I said to drop them off and I would charge them at my campsite in trailer village. (I’m paying for the electricity anyway)

Jane and “Mojo” had their Litebox scopes set up looking at Pluto and brought alone their maker Berry Peckham from Honolulu, HI. They had been studying Pluto and had it charted which is about the only way to tell that your looking at it.

Dean had the new GCSP shirts, they’re great. Dennis had some of the new Sirius Looker shirts so we’re all sporting new duds. We now have Sirius Looker chapters in IL (Geoff) NV (Brad) CO (Allen) maybe we’ll become a “movement”

The attendance seemed to be up and we had more people looking through our scope this year. They say park attendance is still down over the last few years but it was better then last year (9/11 effect) Nice to have a couple hundred people looking through the scopes again. I usually started with M92 then move to Scorpius and NGC 6231 (Scorpius’s Jewel Box). The green lasers work great for tracing the constellations for the crowd and I spent a night just doing laser astronomy Saturday. The people seemed to enjoy just having someone wandering around that they could ask to show them the constellations.

Ellen gave the other refractor astronomers the best challenge for the week, four double stars in the same field of view. It’s called the Herschel 1470 group in Cygnus, she had found it in an old astronomy book and had been trying to find it herself the last few times out. Rodger finally got it using the setting circles on his refractor from the lower field. You can split them with only 70x but since they are right in the Milky Way finding them is the hard part. It’s a refractor thing.

We flashed lasers to the North Rim again this year and this time got flashed back, my friend Jim got himself a green laser at RTMC. Even 10 miles away they are bright, when it hits you all you see is a green flash. Jim and I were going to call on the cell phone but I couldn’t get a signal (I don’t think he had one either) so much for “can you hear me now”

I’m already making plans for next year, seems that we are getting bigger so I’ll have to make 6 pounds of mostaccioli instead of the 4. I liked the new parking scope set up. They are blocking the whole parking lot and giving it to us astronomers. It’s not as much of a zoo and a lot safer for the people. If only the few astronomers that need power didn’t have to park on the west side with the scopes it would be perfect. (haven’t they ever heard of batteries?)