In search of Class 1 skies in Nevada - A fairytale Holiday

[OK Apricot]

This will be a little diary of sorts that I can read back on in years to come, but mostly just to share my experiences on what was a textbook fairytale trip to Las Vegas 2023!
 

The weeks prior to the trip I purchased a new flight case to be able to fit everything in mostly assembled so as to minimise setup time under what I'd hoped to be pristine skies. The flight case used every bit of size allowance on a BA flight, and even though we were flying economy and boarding last, managed to find space in the overhead lockers - I was very nervous that there wouldn't be room left and that it'd have to be checked into the hold last minute! 
 

We arrived at the airport, got the shuttle bus to get the car, got the car and made our way to the hotel which was NYNY. The plan for the first two days was to make the 4.5hr drive to LA, however plans changed last minute while we were stopped at a services getting some breakfast 45mins from Vegas. With that, the Mrs gave me her grace to go and shoot that night! Fast forward to that night - I loaded up the car and headed North up I15 to pick up the 93 bound for Hiko, Nevada. Having checked lightpollution maps, it looked like a borderline B1 area as far as LP is concerned, but also stood at nearly 3,500ft elevation. Driving up while the sun was out, it was clear that transparency was a bit down, but I wasn't put off. I had butterflies in my stomach as I approached the areas I'd only been seeing on satellite, the anticipation was strong! I found a great little spot up a gravel road and it was everything I'd hoped it would be. Firstly the Mazda CX-50 rental car was perfect for the terrain being AWD, but also there was a nice clearing off the road to be out of the way and phone signal! Happy days - this looked great.

So anyway the sun started to go down and the stars started revealing themselves one by one. I hurriedly assembled the mini rig and polar aligned, and by 19:39 full astro darkness had descended upon me. Absolutely spoilt for targets at that latitude at the time of year, my gut said to go for something familiar, the thinking being that I could physically see the improvements that a dark sky would allow over heavily light polluted home skies. Besides, I shot a couple new targets while on the trip to Fuerteventura so I wasn't desperate to try anything new. I set up an Autorun sequence on the ASIAIR+ on Andromeda, confirmed everythign was running well, and then it was time to kick back and take it all in.

I looked up and the skies were just breathtaking. That kind of breath taking where you outwardly say WOOOWWWWW like an excited young child. The milky way core was so much brighter than I'd ever seen it, even more so than Fuert. The main band stretching right overhead from horizon to horizon, you could make out dusty texture and features all the way. I bought a pair of Pentax 10x50 binoculars just for the trip, so got these out and started looking around. Absolutely blown away, but it would be nothing compared to the second night... One thing that was interesting was the size of the light dome from Vegas at a distance of 125mi away. Anyways tired from the travel and different time zone, around 1150 I dozed off in the car with the mini rig doing its thing on Andromeda. I woke up again 0230 to find that my sub frames were coming through  with trailing stars! Could not believe it - I'd lost around 2hrs of data because I didn't recalibrate the guiding after a flip. Gutted. Never mind - I recalibrated and carried on for the rest of the night until around 0430 where I packed up and made the 2hr drive back to the hotel in Vegas. This was the night of the 8th October into early hours of 9th.

So the next couple days we settled in and took in the sights and sounds of the strip, and soon enough on the 10th it was my birthday. Started off with a nice IHOP breakfast, had a look around some shops, more touristy stuff then hit the booze and the casinos in the evening. We got a bit merry and were playing some machines and actually winning, one machine to the next, until we sat on this particular one... We're making a complete nuisance of ourselves, loud and lairy brits abroad and the game we were playing landed a bonus. We watched and hoped that it would do something good, and BOOM $2769 major jackpot drops in! I don't know who's aware but americans pay 30% tax on gambling winnings in the States over $1200, but being Brits we don't need to pay tax due to treaties or something. It took a good 45mins to sort the paperwork but we got our payout, and got absolutely wasted for the rest of the night. Next morning was a bit sore but I'd made sure to drink water between drinks so I wasn't too bad.

Fast foward to next shooting evening, the transparency and visibility looked crisp on the drive up to Hiko, so I was very excited to see any improvements in the sky... Same routine as before, added a few targets into the ASIAIR in Plan mode, and sat back and did some casual observing. What I experienced for the rest of that night was something I will remember for many years. This is how good the sky was.... The darkest sky I've ever seen. Low level clouds were only visible due to the void of stars in the sky that they left. The milky way was so much more prominent even than the night before! It extended in width from Delphinus to Lyra, and was thick with contrast, very very bright. The Lagoon and Triffid obvious within the core area, with M16 and M17, many clusters visible, and maybe the faintest hint of colour  through the MW band. There was the most subtle of shadows on the ground just being cast by the light of the sky above, just from the MW and the stars. M31 was a well extended disc who's radius was going right out to the star HD3431, a mag+6.8 star itself, M33 was an easy naked eye object, almost with direct vision among many others. The Veil complex was visible through my binoculars, the Eastern side very obvious and direct vision, the Western and Pickering's Triangle there too but with averted vision. The Cygnus Wall in the NA nebula was there, M33 was a pronounced bright cloud, dust lanes visible in M31, SO MUCH TO SEE. The Helix, Dumbbell, M42, M45, Double Cluster and the list goes on and on. The icing on the cake was during the drive back. Bearing in mind I was not dark adapted, you know, with the many drivers on the roads driving with their beams on, as I looked east checking out Venus I noticed a brightening of the sky, a sort of wedge/isoceles triangle shape extended past M44 toward Gemini. It was the zodiacal light! I was seeing the faintest dust of the solar system disc, very obviously while not even dark adapted on my drive back, for the first time ever! A very strange and surreal sight to be honest - like a false dawn as they say. That felt special. That felt like going back to the barest bones of nature itself. Just unreal, utterly fascinating and welded into my memory forever. 

The day after, we wined and dined, did some more touristy stuff, and at the Top of the World up the Strat Tower, I proposed to my partner and she said yes! So that's the fairytale! Three jackpots in Vegas - One an actual Jackpot on my Birthday, two the most pristine skies I have ever seen, and three, my partner will soon be my wife! They say things come in threes

Thanks for letting me share, and for reading if you got this far. Finally I'd like to share the three images that I produced with photons collected from Hiko... By far my best to date, and with my modest mini rig

M31 is an HaRGB total of 7hrs 41mins integration - 90x30s IR Cut, 166x120s IR Cut, 21x240s L-Enhance.

 

M42 is an HaRGB total of 5hrs 2mins. 60x10s IR Cut, 70x120s IR Cut, 38x240s L-Enhance.

 

M45 is an RGB total of 3hrs 17mins. 197x60s IR Cut.

 

 

Thanks once again for letting me share

[Swoop1]

Very nice tale @OK Apricot!

Congratulations on your pending nuptuals and well done for beating the house👍

[Elp]

Congratulations on multiple levels.

It's hard to beat a good IHOP.

[Dan_Paris]

I really enjoyed your story as well as the pictures, congrats!