My wife Amy went w/ me to my dark sky site last night. We left around 6:30pm and got home about 11, so it was a pretty productive night. On the way the moon was a fingernail just above the road in the sunset and was very nice to look at. We arrived just as it started getting dark and she was a little worried since you couldn't really see the Milky Way. I assured her that in an hour it'd be much brighter and went about setting up. We brought the XT10 and all of my regular gear (EP kit, table, drummers throne, etc). I really need to build an observing chair, but for now I'm pretty happy with what I've got. Anyway... it's crazy how hard the constellations are to find when the sky is full of stars.
I spent a decent time showing off the easier things I knew I could find with no problem (Ring Nebula, Hercules Cluster, Andromeda Galaxy w/ naked eye and telescope and the Double Cluster). It's crazy how much brighter all of the DSO's were, but that's what a dark site is all about.
New stuff we saw...
M22 - in Sagittarius was a nice globular cluster
M8 - Lagoon Nebula was perfect in 15mm (note to self... need a 2x barlow instead of 3x)
M33 Triangulum Galaxy - sort of between Andromeda and the Triangulum... man this thing is dim even out there! It's not much to see optically, but I saw it finally!
All in all we had a great time! I spent almost 2 hours w/ the telescope and Amy enjoyed the overall sky with tons of stars (and a few meteors).
Happy Birthday to Amy and happy Dark Sky night!
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