My Astro 28X class at California Cavern, Spring '08.
In the Rock Shop, ready for the descent
This field astronomy course will keep us busy both staring upward at the universe, and staring deep underground at the amazing geologic processes happening in limestone caverns. With the recent discovery of possible running water and also limestone formations on Mars, the processes we'll study here may happen more widely on other planets.
Here's a link to the formation of Caverns. We camped near here and explored the caverns as part of Astro 28X back in Spring '08. Check out the photos from that adventure. Farther up Hwy 4 back in '01 for Astro 28E; before I was so meticulous about digital photo-recording everything. However, check out the pix I did get at the link. We also went here just last year, in 2017, and had a great adventure. See the pictures here.
Saturday Oct 6 at 9am-11:50am in Room 705
This is our on-campus pre-trip meeting. This is the official beginning of the class, so any adds must be done before or during this class. We'll do some logistics first: sign liability waivers (students under 18 need to get a parent to sign), take roll, collect meal money ($12 gets your 4 fine meals cooked by Chez Nolthenius, and leadership in meal clean up from my Team (Ann and Becky)), distribute map packets, help you meet your new friends and decide on car pooling, share cell numbers from drivers, then a planetarium show discussing planetary formation in stellar clusters and nebulae.
Our campground is at Wakaluu Hepyoo Campground just a few yards before the Sourgrass Crossing over the Stanislaus River - that's where we camped last year. It is first come / first served at this time in the Fall, but last year when we arrived Friday afternoon the campground was almost vacant and the sites best for astronomy were unoccupied (which is typical - most campers like to be under lots of trees). Still, I will want to get up there ASAP on Friday to grab spots. Anyone (Kirk? JP?) wanting to come a little early and help on that are extremely welcome to do so! Pictures and details to follow...
My Astro 28X class at California Cavern, Spring '08. |
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In the Rock Shop, ready for the descent |
Get onto Hwy 4 going into the Sierra and pass through Arnold up to Dorrington. At Dorrington, look for Boards Crossing Rd. The Google Earth 'streetview' image of the intersection is below. Turn right onto Boards Crossing Rd, which winds through residential forested area and then splits into Forest Rte 5N02 and Boards Crossing. You want to take the left branch = Forest Rt 5N02, which leads to the campgrounds on the river after another ~2 miles. However, note that it's possible at thie no-reservations campground that is may be full before we get there, in which case our second choice is the Boards Crossing campground a couple miles back up and then down the road you came in on, down to "Boards Crossing" primitive campground. It would be a good idea to bring enough water for your personal needs in case we end up there. Here's the map
Here's the turnoff as you come up Hwy 4 at Dorrington, to turn right and head down to our campground possibilities |
The map to our campground possibilities. #1 is the upper area, with the Wakaluu Hep Yoo campground and SourGrass Campground. If those are full and you don't find me, I will try to post a note on the message board and tell you to go back up to the "Y" and down Boards Crossing Rd and we'll be at the Primitive campground, which has bathrooms but water will be our own. |
Google Earth view of our Wakaluu Hep-Yo campground. The turnoff into the campground is just before you cross the river, on your left. If you cross the river you've gone too far. Drive up along the campground road and look for either a red van (Kirk's) or a white Cabrillo College van, or telescopes! |
The Stanislaus River near the bridge |
Another shot near our campsite |
If somehow (very unlikely) Wakaluu Hep-Yo campground is full, our secondary choice camp area is at the bottom of this image at Boards Crossing. It's dispersed camping, which means we just occupy what we want. There may be other campers here as well. |
Arrive at our campsite by around 6pm; I'll fix you a fine pasta dinner. Volunteer contributions of veges and salad makings welcome. We'll stoke up the campfire (if permitted, fire season has been baad) and enjoy a short lecture around the warmth about what we're going to be observing. Then, bring out the scopes and study the galaxies and planets that grace the Fall evening sky. Saturn will be high overhead, . The great Andromdea Galaxyis high. in the east. Our little "Local Group" - consisting of the Milky Way, Andromeda, and a posse of little groupie dwarf galaxies, are on the outskirts of the Virgo Supercluster (cluster of clusters!) of galaxies. Bring your chocolate chip cookies to enjoy around the scopes! Our astronomy club members Kirk B and JP Lane are planning on joining us with their monster 12" and 25" Dobsonian telescopes, and probe for distant quasars and some of the farthest objects possible for any amateur astronomer to ever see, BILLIONS of light years away!
This Fall we have Jupiter setting low in the west after sunset, Venus as well. Saturn and Mars will be well placed in the southern sky. Mars is finishing its closest approach to Earth in 15 years this summer.
Saturday Plan
7:30am Breakfast: As with all my Astro 25 field trip classes - we begin the day with my famous French Crepes breakfast. I'll get up early and begin the preparations of the batter. Help in carving fruit and we'll make it a communal experience. Breakfast will be leisurely, next to the river.
10:30am After we clean up Breakfast, we'll carpool / drive the 45 minutes or so along the picturesque winding roads a few miles northwest of Arnold for a guided tour of California Cavern labelled "Cave City on your map. We have reservations for our group tour of California Cavern (my favorite, compared to Moaning Cavern) requiring us to be at the Cavern shop at 12:30pm at the latest. Students are responsible to pay the $11 fee - ( Group discounts for school groups are $11/person, a deal vs. the regular $17!). That's in addition to your campground and meal fees. Please bring $11 cash and I'll collect it at the Cavern shop (thanks to Carol Lee!) and give it to the guide so we can begin the 1pm tour.
Directions to California Cavern.
Follow me in the Cabrillo College Van and / or use the maps here, which I'll staple together as part of our "map package" when I see you on-campus Oct 6. Coming up from the campground and onto Hwy 4, we drive down the mountain, looking for Avery-Sheep Ranch Rd, onto which we turn right....
Here is where we turn right, onto Avery-Sheep Ranch Rd. From here, it's 17 miles and 40 minutes to the Californina Cavern |
Stay on Sheep Ranch Rd as it winds through the hills and "T" ends at Sheep Ranch Rd. Turn right onto Sheep Ranch Rd |
Stay on Sheep Ranch to Mtn Ranch, and turn left, and left again on Cave City Rd to California Cavern State Historical Monument at "Cave City". |
Mapquest Route. Might be a little slower on a Friday afternoon, though. |
After the caverns, we'll visit and explore a really interesting spot, where a creek has dissolved its way right through a ridge, coming out the other side. It's called "Natural Bridge" and is at the bottom of a 1 mile hike down to do a 1 mile hike to this fascinating place. Here, Coyote Creek disappears into a giant limestone hole. This year I'd like to try going through it from one side to the other, as several people did last year.
Natural Bridge Creek, disappears into a hole, but you can walk or wade to the other side, 30 yards away, and when we were there, airspace above the whole way (we didn't do it, talked to others there who did) |
Map to Natural Bridge hiking trail. It's also the way towards Moaning Cavern, which we visited back in '08 |
Our goals: Study the process of precipitation and calcium carbonate formation. I'll connect this to how we can determine the tipping point for the melting of the Siberian Permafrost in paleo climate. Very clever, ingenious idea worked out and successfully carried out by by Dr. Anton Vaks and his team 4 years ago. This is a key piece of science showing how serious our current climate change future will be.
Then, if there's time, another drive further up Hwy 4 to a location where we can see a rare outcrop of the original, 100+ million year old volcanic mountain range that preceeded the formation of the Sierra and discuss how volcanoes on Mars and Earth may be connected by similar processes. More likelly, we'll explore the Stanislaus River canyon. We'll study glacier and water carved granite formations and lecture on the processes that shape canyons on Mars, the Moon, Mercury, Titan, and Earth. I'll also lecture on the Milakovitch cycles and their grounding in the semi-chaotic nature of gravity in the solar system, the last great Ice Age, evidence for a giant comet impact at the end of the Ice Age. If it's warm enough, we'll have some relaxation time swimming in the river.
At the telescope; we'll use our computer-controlled 8" scope to direct us across the heavens' best study objects |
Saturday evening - Another great campfire dinner! An Asian theme'd jasmine rice and vege's creation with Asian spices.
Follow up with more telescopic explorations of the evening sky. Contrasting galaxy types, nearby star clusters and the structure of the Milky Way disk that we live in. Late in the evening, the incredible objects of the Fall Milky Way and the Sagittarius Spiral Arm will be in the West, and the supernovae remnant Veil Nebula high overhead. We'll study the birth (in luminous emission nebulae) and death (in a final exhalation of their last breath) of stars, with the Ring, Owl, and Dumbell nebulae.
Sunday Plan
Another delicious breakfast creation - this one centered around eggs and simmered black beans and vegetables with cowboy toast. Then, we'll aim the 8" scope w/ filter at the sun and I'll lecture on the solar cycles, their relation to sunspots, and to Earth climate. We may do one more hike, down to the river. I'm working on that. It would be short.
Before we leave camp, I'll hand out the take-home final exams (you'll have ~10 days to finish and return to me). I'm also checking on locations which might be worth a stop on the drive home. My thought is to drive through Calveras Big Trees State Park and enjoy the giant Sequoias - largest organisms on Earth. Either way, you should be back in Santa Cruz by late afternoon if you have studying to do, so no worries.
