Grand Canyon's Star Party

Above, Grand Canyon National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

With Jupiter set to be at its closest point to Earth tomorrow night, people can view it and see its largest moons through binoculars. 

Unfortunately, we may have cloudy skies tomorrow night, so I might miss it.

But, Grand Canyon National Park is holding its annual Star Party at the end of this month. It is also the recipient of a notable distinction.

According to KSNV News:

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — The Grand Canyon National Park is set to celebrate its annual Star Party, a week-long event that meant to educate night sky fanatics with nightly workshops and keynote speakers, during the last full week of June. 

The event comes just in time for the park to achieve full Dark Sky Park status, an achievement given by the International Dark-Sky Association that recognizes the darkest places on earth, which make for the best spots for stargazing. 

The Grand Canyon National Park was named a Provisional IDA International Dark Sky Park in June of 2016, giving the park three years to accomplish changes having to do with its light fixtures to make the park more star-friendly and conserve more energy.

My "honorary sister" and I had a bit of a discussion on astronomy last night which got me motivated to check out telescopes. We both took astronomy in college (for our natural science requirement). I currently have a refractor telescope that I bought at the time, but it has its limitations on what can be seen. I've been wanting to get a reflector telescope and did some shopping around. I found one last night and ordered it along with the necessary adapters for mounting my camera to it for astronomical photography. Best of all, the price was reasonable.

This is what I bought:

Funny thing, I still remember most everything from that astronomy class. Admittedly, it was one of my favorite classes.

One of the things the realtor told me about Jamestown is that it is in a great location for night sky viewing, and it is. Now that the Barking Spider Acre has been mowed, I can set up over there and do some star gazing.

To read more on the Star Party at the Grand Canyon, go here.