Dark Sky Weekend at Sandstone Ranch

Last Sunday I went to a star party at Sandstone Ranch open space in Douglas County. Some good friends who live nearby went with me, and brought their Dwarf 2 (an older telescope very similar to my Dwarf 3).

Like many nights, it started out very cloudy, but cleared up soon after sunset. Wormwood (my Dwarf 3) polar aligned and worked fine, easily finding the Owl Nebula and the Pinwheel Galaxy.

My friend’s Dwarf 2 had some connectivity problems, then had some problems with the initial focus. But eventually these were sorted, and he was able to get some pictures of the Owl Nebula. Success! This was effectively first-light for this telescope. I’m hoping that after he takes some darks and reprocesses, he’ll be happy with the results.

I had forgotten that the Owl Nebula is a bit small for my telescope. I had one picture in my album, from last year, and it didn’t look too bad, but of course I had cropped it significantly. So, after just a few minutes, I switched from the Owl to the Pinwheel. Here is the result from my Owl data.

Here is what I got from the Pinwheel that night.

I then decided to combine this Pinwheel data with all of the other times I’ve worked on the Pinwheel, and here is how this came out.