Last night I took the AD10 out to a darker sky site at Congaree National Park with my friend Jim (who brought his XT6). We arrived right before it got dark and set up in a meadow in the middle of the Longleaf Campground (for anyone local, the park is open 24 hours and the rangers told me you didn’t need a camping permit or anything to come use the meadow at night—unless you actually plan to camp). As soon as it got dark the Milky Way was easily visible from tree line to tree line. It’s class 4 skies there, but I would guess it’s closer to 3 than to 5 (at home is 5 in one direction and 4 in the other).
I’d gotten my new
I had a whole slew of targets in Sagittarius I was hoping to hit, but some of the lower globulars were still blocked by the trees. I viewed M28 and M22 again (but for the first time with this scope) and then began working my way up from there checking out several clusters and nebulae. I moved from Lagoon (M8) to Trifid (M20), both of which were readily apparent and Trifid showed some dark dust bands separating areas of brightness. I moved from there to Web’s Cross (M21) a small bright patch with a sprinkling of stars.
From there I repositioned up to M25 and then hopped to M18 (both nice open clusters) and then landed on the Omega Nebula (M17). This was one of the highlights of the night—it was a prominent area of illumination with a horizontal dust cloud very apparent across its center. I then hopped up to the Eagle Nebula (M16), which showed some glow and hints of structure, but was lacked the “pop” that Omega had.
Next I moved out of Sagittarius and on to some other targets. I viewed Andromeda (M31—along with M32 and M110) which was much brighter than with the XT6 and showed some hints of outer structure. I wouldn’t say that I could actually see dust bands, but the shape of the surrounding glow was much easier to see—M110 in particular was also noticeably brighter than with my old scope. I’m looking forward to getting some time with Leo and Ursa Major for some more galaxy hunting in the future!
From there I checked out the Great Cluster of Hercules (M13) both to see it from a darker site and to let my friend Jim check it out in the 10”. It was high overhead and the more I looked the more stars I could resolve. I tried to spot the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101), but it was right around the tree line (and sky glow of Columbia), so I wasn’t able to spot it. I also tried for Triangulum (M33), but it likewise was fairly low to the tree line.
By that point both Jim and I started having issues viewing and we realized that we must have hit the dewpoint because everything was suddenly wet with condensation (including the lens on the finderscope). I slewed over to Jupiter to try and close the night out on it since it had risen up—and we were able to get some nice views of it still, but the dew was definitely causing some interference (I was getting a view through the
Even with that, I could definitely see much more detail in Jupiter than I’d been able to see with my 6” scope. The equatorial bands were always present before, but now I could make out more fine details of some swirls and variations within the banding. The
A couple of takeaways from last night—Congaree is really not too far away, so I should make a point to get back out there more often. We were already talking about bringing our families out there to camp so that we can stay out later (and can let the kids play with the scopes before bedtime and then have more time for serious observing). The other one is that I see now why people are using dew shields. We were cracking up about how quickly it went from totally fine to totally wet, so any suggestions y’all have on remedying dew would be appreciated .
Photo via Iphone 13Pro towards Sagittarius:
