Kelly, My name is Rodger Fry and I am the president of the Salt Lake Astronomical Society. I have been toying with the idea of coming over to Great Basin National Park for a long time and have finally decided that I have to do it (yes I am having Bryce Withdrawals, BIGTIME!). Myself and one other SLAS member, Mark Shelton, will be coming down together and will be bringing a camp trailer and at least three telescopes. We will be leaving SLC the morning of Thursday July 28, 2011 and will arrive in the mid afternoon. I want to make sure that we get there early enough to insure that we have a trailer camp site. Let me know what time we should plan on being there. I retired after working as a geologist for 40 years and have a special interest in planetary geology. I have put a PowerPoint presentation together on Mars geology that is mildly technical but has been very well received wherever I have presented it. I would be glad to present this at your astronomy festival during the day if you would like. It is about 40 minutes long. If you have a computer projector there, I could just bring my laptop or our club has a computer projector that I could bring. Let me know if you would like me to present this as I think your visitors would find it very interesting. I know that one other SLAS board member, Steve Fisher will also be coming and will be bringing our club's Coronado H-Alpha solar telescope for viewing during the day. We have our general meeting on Tuesday night July 19, 2011 and I will announce your event to our membership in hopes of getting some additional volunteers. If you were to be at the meeting (7:30 PM at the University of Utah), I would be glad to give you time to promote this event. Being a new moon weekend, we haven't scheduled any public star parties and so we will probably have several members that will be looking for a dark site to spend the weekend. I am looking very much to being a part of your festival and feel that it has the potential to grow into a major event. Let me know what you think. Thanks Rodger C. Fry SLAS President -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Kelly_Carroll@nps.gov Having Bryce withdrawal? Great Basin National Park will be having its 2nd Annual Astronomy Festival July 28-30. Like last year we will be having our astronomer's camp (free tent camping - astronomer's camp has a limited number of space, opens Thursday morning until Sunday morning and it's tent only), free astronomer's dinner, and a ranger talent show - as well as 23 other events. You can see our schedule of events at: http://www.nps.gov/grba/planyourvisit/2011-astronomy-festival.htm Dr. Tyler Nordgren, astronomer and author of "Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks" will be this year's keynote speaker. Please email me if you have any questions. We hope to see you here! Best and clear skies, Kelly Kelly Carroll Great Basin National Park http://www.nps.gov/grba/ Experience your America _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php