My Astro 28X class at California Cavern, Spring '08.
In the Rock Shop, ready for the descent
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I will be updating the conduct of this course as we get closer to launch. I'm hoping that prosective students will find this page and then be better informed about what "the plan" is. As of this writing - Aug 1 - I'm seeing if there is a possibility of re-re-changing this back to a genuine field trip class. I had been resigned to having it be an on-line only class, and perhaps this is why enrollment has not happened. Students want a field trip adventure!
If the class continues as an on-line class, the best model for how this would be conducted is my recently concluded Astro 25 Summer '20 course which I hope you'll look at. It consisted of Zoom sessions with recordings then available asynchronously, and grading to be accomplished through a 47 multiple choice question final exam do-able "take home" style but on Canvas, with a week long unlock period to work on the exam. Answers can be found in my Zoom recordings, and of course you can Google for answers as well, or use the prior nominal textbook "The Cosmic Perspective" by Bennett et al if you have it, or you could buy an old edition for cheap on Amazon.
If the class can be transformed back to a real field class, I would still plan to go to the Stanislaus River. In that case, we'd follow much of the information shown below (except the pre-trip meeting would not be on-campus but instead be on-Zoom). You'd find your way to our proposed campground used on the prior 2017 Fall Astro 25 trip. You'd be camping in your own tents, I'd be responsible for all group meals (meal fee of $10 to be collected at the campsite) except lunches and snacks, so you could more easily stay socially distant and not touch the food preparation. Food would be cooked of course. Mask up when in the presence of others, of course. We may or may not be able to get into the California Caverns but even if not, there's a creek which tunnels through limestone (Natural Bridge natural area) which is very interesting and has many of the formations seen in California Caverns, and a great place to enjoy cool water on a hot end-of-summer day, and that's going to be open I must assume as it's on National Forest property nearby. I'd have my usual micro-lectures on the trails as we hike to this spot (just a 2-3 mile hike round trip), and there's the Stanislaus River itself we can enjoy right at camp.
I will continue to update this course, prefaced by a date like this first entry Aug 1. Check back regularly, and when I have enrollment, I'll email you as well.
No. Alas, no chance - This class is 100% definitely only an on-line course. I heard from the Dean that he has no plans to cancel any of our NAS scheduled classes. That means for now even with the low enrollment, this class will "go". That'll remain my plan, and I'll fill in this syllabus. It will be very similar to the Summer '20 Astro 25 in the lectures. I'll put up supplementary material on limestone caverns and the relation to climate that will have to substitute with really being there. But the focus of the courses will become more the pure astronomy lectures; some have already been taped and posted on YouTube or Zoom. I'll hold our first on-line Zoom session introducing what we'll do, and then turning you loose for watching my "Star and Planet Formation" lecture online. Grading will mostly be on your score on the final exam, which will be in Canvas Quizzes and you'll have a week to work on it, using my resources, Google, anything online you can find. OK, that's all for now. I'll post again after things settle down a little more. Life in Santa Cruz is 95% pure chaos right now.
Our first meeting is 6-9pm on Sept 9, I'll send you the Zoom link when we get closer. I'll have more YouTube and PowerPoint links for you to watch as the course builds.
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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. and some recent work using them for studying paleo climate change. 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.
