A25Fall19

This Fall's section of Astro 25 will take advantage of a beautiful dark-sky site nearby that should be both convenient and rewarding for students and staff both. Arroyo Seco Canyon has a spectacular canyon with swimming holes, water falls, geology that tells the tale of the evolution of Planet Earth, and great dark skies especially towards the south and west where the Summer Milky Way has its best objects of telescopic study. We have reserved enough campsites for 32 people and 8 behicle - good enough for a full class. It's only a ~100 minute drive south of us, in the Big Sur Mtns west of Greenfield.

We have several campsites in the upper loop, with good views of the sky. This is a web view of some of the other campsites at Arroyo Seco

Saturday's day hike will take us up the canyon to a series of swiming holes and waterfalls, and we'll fill the hike with a series of stops and my "micro-lectures" on topics on the stars and planets

Google Earth view of our campsites

Arroyo Seco is one of the two largest rivers leading out of the Big Sur Mountains, and carves a beautiful canyon in the foothills east of Greenfield.

The days should be warm, but we'll enjoy cool river pools while we soak knowledge of the cosmos.

Schedule

Sept 20 Fri 6-9pm
Meet in room 705 (possibly 806 if Oceanography needs the room), for logistics and an opening lecture on star and planet formation.
* sign liability waivers
* Make rrangements for I and my team to cook 4 meals for you, including my famous French Crepes Breakfast on Saturday morning.
* Pass out map packets
* Arrange car pools. We'd very much like to compact ourselves into 8 cars. The college van will be full of telescope and kitchen gear, and my volunteer(s), and so won't be able to take students.

Friday Sept 27
* Meet at the campground. We have sites 36 (probably the best spot for setting up the scopes), 37 and 41. Site 41 is a double site. We are on the shore of Abbott Lake. I'm OK with you arriving a bit late if you work. However, it's only a 2 hr drive from Santa Cruz even on a Friday afternoon, so I hope everyone can be there before we cook our pasta dinner and salad on Friday night. We'd like to finish and clean up before dark, when we bring out the telescopes. Plan for dinner to start at 6pm.

Saturday Sept 28
* I'll probably get up early and do a morning trail run, then be back in time to begin prep on our French Crepes breakfast. Plan on breakfast serving by 9am, finish up by 10am, and get ready for our journeys to "the Gorge", where we'll have my iconic "Micro-lectures" on topics in star formation and evolution, planetary elements and their origin in the interstellar medium and nuclear fusion, and supernovae. Micro-lectures are no longer than 10-15 minutes, but there will be a number of them during the day. We'll get down-and-gritty with studying elements formation as we explore the canyons up stream from the campground. We'll especially explore up close the molecule H2O with a total educational immersion.

Saturday night
* Asian Rice a'la Nolthenius is our planned dinner creation, with organic salad and fresh-made avacado dressing. All our meals are vegetarian, however if you want to bring some meat to cook up and share, feel free and people can add or not to their dinners. I do cook with eggs in the Crepes batter, but no milk. My recipe and cooking have been featured on the wonderful "Out and About in California" by Huel Howser some years before he passed away.

* If cloudy, we'll have a campfire discussion and presentation on galaxy formation and quasars, black holes, cosmology, the origin of the Universe, and the nature of life and how it constrains the laws of physics and how it relates to the concept of the Multi-verse. We'll lecture on these subjects around the telescopes, if clear. We hope to have J.P.'s enormous 17" or even 25" Dobsonian telescope to view through, and our computer-operated Celestron as well, and 10x70 binoculars on tripod, great for scanning the summer Milky Way's star clusters and star formation regions.

Sunday Morning Sept 29
* 8:30am - Another great breakfast creation. Either a fried vegetable and scrambled eggs with cowboy toast/tortilla confab, or perhaps home-made gourmet granola. We're pondering with our Team on that.

9:45am - Another venture up the canyon for another few micro-lectures on the relation of the Earth's climate to cosmic and civilization forces, and how it will change California - this while we enjoy a last soak in one of the many swimming holes in The Gorge.

Followed by return to camp, pack up, and pass out of the take-home final exams, and instructions on how to complete and return to the instructor.