On Monday evening, October the 7th, Tony Donnangelo and I traveled to the Tuscarora State Forest near Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, to spend a night communing with the heavens. We spent the night at a newly acquired dark sky site off of Longfellow Road. I had been there just once previously, back in July. That was the Saturday night of the great smoke-out when smoke from forest fires in Quebec filtered south of the border and put us out of business by 5:30 UT. This time around conditions were quite good during the night but it certainly did get cold. When we woke up from a nap at 8:30 a.m. EDT (12:30 UT) there was a layer of frost on some of our gear.
The night's observing began by watching a beautiful 37 hour old moon set through my 101mm Tele Vue Genesis sdf refractor at 13x (35mm Panoptic) and 60x (9mm Nagler type 6). The very thin crescent was quite striking as it slid rapidly through the pellucid sky into the western treeline.
I then began an astronomical twilight tour of deep-sky objects with the refractor including M3, M8, M22, M17 and M24.
As darkness fell and the night progressed I also viewed M31, M32, M110, M33, Collinder 399 (the Coathanger), NGC 6802, V Aquilae, M11, NGC 6960 and NGC 6992 (the western and eastern segments of the Cygnus Loop), Omicron Cygni, NGC 7000 (the North America Nebula), NGC 891, the Golf Putter asterism, NGC 752, Almach, NGC 253 (the Silver Coin Galaxy), NGC 7293 (the Helix), M42, M43, M79, and M78. NGC 6802, the dim open cluster located at the far eastern end of the Coathanger, was a somewhat difficult target with only 101mm of aperture as was the edge-on "needle" galaxy NGC 891.
When the gas giants were well positioned I spent some time on Saturn and Jupiter using Tony's 3.5mm Orion Lanthanum Superwide (154x). At 3:42 a.m. EDT (7:42 UT) I watched Io come out of occultation using this eyepiece.
The night's observing began by watching a beautiful 37 hour old moon set through my 101mm Tele Vue Genesis sdf refractor at 13x (35mm Panoptic) and 60x (9mm Nagler type 6). The very thin crescent was quite striking as it slid rapidly through the pellucid sky into the western treeline.
I then began an astronomical twilight tour of deep-sky objects with the refractor including M3, M8, M22, M17 and M24.
As darkness fell and the night progressed I also viewed M31, M32, M110, M33, Collinder 399 (the Coathanger), NGC 6802, V Aquilae, M11, NGC 6960 and NGC 6992 (the western and eastern segments of the Cygnus Loop), Omicron Cygni, NGC 7000 (the North America Nebula), NGC 891, the Golf Putter asterism, NGC 752, Almach, NGC 253 (the Silver Coin Galaxy), NGC 7293 (the Helix), M42, M43, M79, and M78. NGC 6802, the dim open cluster located at the far eastern end of the Coathanger, was a somewhat difficult target with only 101mm of aperture as was the edge-on "needle" galaxy NGC 891.
When the gas giants were well positioned I spent some time on Saturn and Jupiter using Tony's 3.5mm Orion Lanthanum Superwide (154x). At 3:42 a.m. EDT (7:42 UT) I watched Io come out of occultation using this eyepiece.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
