DSO Nirvana at CSSP

Saturday night was superb at Cherry Springs State Park. The clouds were gone by shortly after 11:00 p.m. and the relatively few observers present at the park were treated to a truly excellent night of deep-sky observing. I had great views of many springtime galaxies and other deep-sky objects through my "new" 8" Starsplitter Tube Dob, Tony Donangelo's 14.5" Starmaster Sky Tracker Dob, a 16" Teeter Telescope Dob, the 16" AstroSystems TeleKit Dob owned by John Mills, and the 20" Starmaster Sky Tracker Dob belonging to Gary Honis.

I haven't transcribed my taped notes yet but some of the more memorable highlights included seeing at least 9 galaxies simultaneously in the heart of the Virgo Cluster - the environs of M84 and M86 - through the 20" with a 31mm Tele Vue Nagler T5, a near photographic view of M51 and NGC 5195 through the 16" as well as a spectacular view of the Leo Trio using a 28mm W.O. UWAN, and observing an old favorite, NGC 4762 (the Mini-M104 Galaxy), through the 14.5". When I trained my 8" on M104, it looked better than I've ever seen it through such a small aperture. The 8" also provided a fine view of NGC 7000 (the North America Nebula) with the help of an Orion UltraBlock filter and a 35mm Tele Vue Panoptic.

Let's hope that Potter County skies will be equally as good for the ASH Cherry Springs Star Party this coming weekend.

http://www.astrohbg.org/s4/index.php

Dave Mitsky

OK. Continue with your summary, but it will be a tough read for me knowing what you are seeing. But, tonight our sky clock is indicating one of the best nights in months, so a few of us are heading to our closest dark site. Perhaps 6-6.5 will be possible. Got my comparison targets picked out. Will see. Glad you are having a good time at the cherry pit after last year's showing.