Telescope Reviews: Re: Is orange Zone 5 bad???

I live in the middle of a red zone. For a few days around the last new moon, my family and I rented a cabin an hour away in a yellow zone. We used my 10" Newt Dob, and each of us brought binos. I had the 15x70s, my wife had 10x50s, and my daughter had 7x50s (her young eyes can take in more light from the large exit pupils of that bino). I brought a laser pointer to show them the different constellations and indicate to my wife and daughter where to point their binos to see various objects. IMHO, the skies were very good. I would be very contented if I had skies like that at my house. No problem. The Milky Way was beautiful. We could see dark lanes, knots, and dark nebulae. I think the Milky Way did dip into Ophiucus, which is supposed to be an indicator of dark skies, though I didn't think to look for that specifically while I was there. Among other things, I saw the Helix and the North America nebulae, which I had never seen before and could probably never see from my house. I also plan to visit a green/blue site that is about 1-1/2 hours from where I live.

Now, do I just give up bothering to set up my scopes in my red zone skies? No way. I'm still going to do astronomy right here in the light polluted burbs. I haven't changed my mind about that at all. That would be silly ... IMHO. I may change my focus, since now I've experienced first-hand how much easier it is to find galaxies and other low surface brightness objects under darker skies. Maybe I'll save the faint fuzzies for the dark sites. But I'll still enjoy the Moon, planets, open star clusters, many globulars and planetaries and double stars where I am. That just makes good sense. I enjoy all fields of amateur astonomy except astrophotograpy, solar and variables. Why shouldn't I make the best use of my time and my instruments wherever I am? Little smudgy galaxies and the other faint fuzzies aren't everything. Not by a long shot.

Mike

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Celestron 10" f5 Newt on 1stBase (DSO)
Zhumell 8" f6 Newt, Bosma 6" f12 MCT (NSO)
6" f5 Newt, 130ST, 4.5" f4.4 Ball w/GLP, ST80 w/Crayford (RFTs)
C4-R (NSO/DS)
90mm f13 MCT (Luna/DS)
SkyMaster 25x100, 15x70
Zhumell 20x80
Barska XWA 10x50, 8x40
OptiView LPR 10x50
Const View 2.3x40
BV-125C
CG5, 2 drv / CG4, 2 drv, wood legs, ScopeStuff saddle / CG3, 1 drv
SV AZ / 501HDV on Bogen 055XB / P+ on Oberwerk
QuikFinder, Telrad
Orion Dynamo Pro 12, Dew-Not
Have GLP and not afraid to use it!

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