Dark Sky Weekend

Don and I headed down to Gooseberry Mesa this past weekend for some clear, dark southern Utah Skies. What an awesome campsite... observing site... mountain biking site... and weekend. Temperatures were pushing into the mid 50's by day... and dropping back to the low 30's at night. Just perfect for running a marathon.


I didn't have time to plan an observing list... so I ended up running a mini-Messier Marathon... eventually snagging 40 Messier's in marathon night sequence :-) While I was at it, I threw in a dozen or so Caldwell Objects just for good measure. The Caldwell's (in case you're unsure) are another list of sweet objects for amateurs to observe.

The Andromeda Galaxy, The Orion Nebula, Globular Star Cluster, M3... all looked awesome under the inky black skies. All the while, I ran through the list... notching Messier after Messier. He may have found quite a few comets in his day, but... undoubtedly, his greatest contribution to amateur astronomers is his list of throw-away objects... The Messier List.