The Chaco Canyon Observatory

Another belated Chaco Canyon post.

Oct. 2019

About 20 years ago an amature astronomer  was looking for a dark sky location to build a small personal observatory.   Sometime during the search (I don't remember the details) the superintendent of Chaco Culture National Historic Park offered him the park as an officially designated and protected dark sky location to build his observatory.   He would have free access to his equipment whenever he wanted and in the mean time the park staff could use it to show visitors the wonders of the night sky, just like the ancient Chacoan did.  A win, win for everyone.

From April throught October there are night sky programs.  Guests can view celestial objects on as many as 4 telescopes.

Looking for Venus low on the horizon. 

Dusk is a good time to view the large planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

A quick snapshot of Jupiter and 4 of it's moons.

As the sky darkens and the Milky Way comes into clear view, deep sky objects like galaxy's, binary stars an globular clusters become the targets of the telescopes.

Another instrument in their arsenal is a Hydrogen Alpha Solar Telescope.  Unlike a nuteral density solar filter (like a welders mask) this filter eliminates all wavelengths of light other than a specific frequency produced by excited hydrogen atoms in the atmosphere just above the sun's surface.  While you can see Sun Spots with the Hydrogen alpha filter it's best for seeing Prominence's.

I saw the Solar scope in action back in April.  This time I asked if they'd show me how to set it up and I'd bring it out for the guests to see the sun on the mornings of the night sky programs.

The first time I setup the Solar scope,  it was just an orange disk, no Sun Spots and no visible Prominence's.  About a week later you could see a little Prominence.  I told the visitors to "... look for a little hairy thing on the edge of the disk".