First Night Under Dark Sky

[webboid]

Last night I visited my local astronomy club's dark site to observe there for the first time with my scope

Despite cloud cover for much of the time I was fortunate to be in the company of some very experienced astronomers & some great kit

For myself I was keen to see how things looked that I had already seen from my own somewhat light polluted back garden. So I checked out M13, M57 & M92. These were all amazing in comparison. Then observed these in another colleagues 18 inch dob. Tremendous views despite cloud continuing to obscure things. Persevering through the cloud a hole appeared just where Andromeda is so I had a look at this with my new 32mm panaview. Incredible I could see both satellite galaxy's M32 & M110 quite clearly. I also had a look at the dumbbell nebular & some other galaxy's in the 18 inch dob also amazing.

As midnight came & went it was very unlikely things were going to clear so a brief look at the double cluster & the owl cluster. Then time to pack up.

I can say I had an incredibly mind blowing first experience of a brief look at a dark sky & can't wait to return with more favourable weather. This gave me a great insight to the potential of my now apparently little 8 inch scope

Paul

[Daniel-K]

sounds like you had some fun i remember taking my 8inch scope to a dark site for the first time and looking at the spiral arms in m51 was mind blowing dark skies rule the roost when observing

[swamp thing]

Sounds like a great night.

You cannot beat that dark sky experience.

[m_j_lyons]

Dark skies + good scope = awe inspiring!!

Happy hunting.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report. Glad you had some good views of famous fuzzies.