The Bryce Canyon National Park was having their Astronomy Festival on June 5-8, 2013.
We attended last year as spectators.
This year we wanted to take our telescope and participate as presenters.
The Salt Lake Astronomical Society was providing the astronomers and the telescopes.
I contacted Don Colton, who was in charge, and volunteered.
Don invited us to participate.
Nancy and I arrived about lunchtime and decided to explore the park.
We had been to Bryce Canyon a number of times but it was a long time ago.
The last couple of times we were in the park we took the shuttle.
Unfortunately, we were never able to be in the park when the special shuttle went to Rainbow Point.
We drove out to Rainbow Point, the furthest part of the park you can drive to, and did a short hike.
Then we worked our way back to the park entrance, stopping at each turnout and parking lot.
Nancy took lots of pictures.
We did some hiking.
Since we live at 5200 feet above sea level, the 8,000-9,000 foot elevation in the park did not present a problem.
The park is beautiful and is one of my favorites.
We had a briefing at 6:00 pm that covered general issues and suggestions.
Since this was our first night as a volunteer, we attended the National Park Service “guidelines for interacting with the public” briefing.
Then it was off to the telescope field to set up.
There was about thirty telescopes the first night
The National Park Service gave us these great T Shirts for volunteering.
This is what it looked like after the sun went down.The viewing was great.
We had a constant stream of people at our telescope until after midnight.
We had people from all over the United States and from all over the world.
This was a great experience!
A ranger took some time lapse videos and posted them on you tube.
Video of First Night
Video of Second Night