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dark skys

faulksy

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faulksy

faulksy

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my thoughts on dark skys. this is the first time i have been to a proper dark sky and this was set in mid wales.

started the venture around 19.00, bit late but hey ho. about 1.5 hours into the journey noticed the skys were proper clear and no street lights to be seen anywere. temperature out side was -2 so things were looking good. coming towards the end of the journey and myself and bro in law decided to stop just for a nose around. got out of the car and realy honestly could not believe the heavens above, the back ground was velvet black and straight away you could see m31 and my eyes hadnt even adjusted to the dark yet. so jumped in the car and carried on till we reached our destination. by now i was realy excited so when we started to unload the car paul said wow have a look at this, i said no i want to set the scope up then i will look. by now its showing - 4 on my power station hands are cold still in a t shirt lol. got everything set up which is a lovely flat stone car park and had a brew put coat on e.t.c. and looked up at the skys for the first time properly and couldnt believe the stars you could see, paul said to me you cant even see your hands! which you couldnt never experienced that before, it realy was that dark even my red light torch seemed over bright. read a report on here a few weeks ago about how to determine how dark your sky is by counting how many stars you can see in the square of orion, but there was to many to count honestly you couldnt see the square due to the mass of stars.first of leo triplet wow, then m51, you could see both dust lanes spiraling around the galagys no problem no fuzzys here, then m104 sombrero centre bulge very bright and the dust lanes, from home i can only just make it out,next up m1 very nice but strangely not much differentto home, but m97 was amazing you could see proper structure not just a grey blob tryed most of these nebs with a uhc filter as well but i t was better with out. only big mistake i made was i didnt look through the scope at m31 in time it was just going behind a tree line bit gutted about that, must of been with all the excitment. seen lots of clusters as well and orion of course, and all were great.by the time the moon started to rise the sky went from black to a dark grey and the stars were twinkiling like mad , juust unlucky but we had a good few hours with excellent skys and at least when the seeing did alter the moon was coming up any way. hope i didnt go on to much havnt done anything like this before. the moral of this story is if you have a 6" scope and you want a bigger one dont buy one just go to a dark site and that scope will turn into a 10" it realy is that good. enjoy and clear skys.

regards

mike :grin: :grin: :grin: :grin:

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stevetynant

stevetynant

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Fantastic, sounds like you had a great time mike.glad your brother in law was with you, were you both on your own all night then and what were the roads like to the site?

I'm giving this serious thought for a Saturday night trip at some point though will have to get there in the daylight, I guess its two to three hour drive from where I am but sounds like it would be worth it.

Excellent report thanks for taking the time to write it out for us.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

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faulksy

faulksy

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Fantastic, sounds like you had a great time mike.glad your brother in law was with you, were you both on your own all night then and what were the roads like to the site?

I'm giving this serious thought for a Saturday night trip at some point though will have to get there in the daylight, I guess its two to three hour drive from where I am but sounds like it would be worth it.

Excellent report thanks for taking the time to write it out for us.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

hi steve, yes mate on our own all night didnt see a single car due to it beeing a dead end.the roads to the site were a bit twisty but the road surface was great.seriously steve i will meet you, 2 hour drive for me as well just try and give me a bit of notice. the only problem with the site was no east views well restricted any way but the south and more importantly the west was as good as you could hope being in a valley. regards mike
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stevetynant

stevetynant

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hi steve, yes mate on our own all night didnt see a single car due to it beeing a dead end.the roads to the site were a bit twisty but the road surface was great.seriously steve i will meet you, 2 hour drive for me as well just try and give me a bit of notice. the only problem with the site was no east views well restricted any way but the south and more importantly the west was as good as you could hope being in a valley. regards mike

Will do mate- hopefully before the end of this year (April) - I've posted on the S Wales group to see if anyone else is interested but if not I'm still up for it - I travel to Cardigan pretty regularly so not too much further - will have to be a Saturday or preferably Friday for me but we'll just have to watch the forecasts and the moon cycle and just go for it - looking forward to it now.

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stevetynant

stevetynant

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It's extremely dark up there isn't it. I remember thinking Jupiter was ruining my dark adaption it was so bright :D

I remember being on top of the Epynt when I first started in this hobby and being convinced I was being buzzed by helicopters with search lights at the edge of the military range for what turned out to be Jupiter and Venus - seems stupid now but in a dark sky with the wind blowing the clouds by I can really appreciate why people have mistaken the planets are UFOs chasing them. :shocked: :shocked:

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